[fic] of these vows unwritten 01/06
Title: Of These Vows Unwritten
Notes: Original characters belong to Joanna and I; meant to be a series of snippets and oneshots featuring various aspects of love in honor of Valentine's Day (as this is a V-Day gift for Joanna), be they heartbreak, resolution, first kisses or confession. The hard moments or soft glances, slow lovemaking or dark intimacy, all those little things that love is composed of.
Summary: Sooyun & Kihyun --- we were too late.
we were too late
His smile is as she remembers; a bright song with straightforward chords, ever skipping jubilantly ahead without pause and without her. Like the air rushing beneath her leaps, the raw freedom of a moment suspended from time and gravity. The laws of stone and earth for a tiny instant held at bay by wonder and joy - impossible is his smile, is her heart that still flutters with all the familiarity of muscle memory. Not the same dance it once was, timid and bashful, a playful dream of yesterday scrawled on the backs of countless silences.
It stuns her that he can still chat as if there is nothing, but a table and two lattes between them. Sooyun knows better. There is an ocean of surrender that swirls in the hollow space of her collarbone, the strands of what if dusty and tangled on the spindle of fate, unspun and untouched.
The dull ache begins anew. His happiness is palpable, his hands steady. Faintly, she recalls a time when she had reached for those hands and found them full, interlaced with another girl's steps and another woman's future. Coffee fragrant and smooth scalds her tongue and burns the inside of her mouth; she welcomes it. It is a better pain than the old coals she tosses, ever tearing and scarring too-delicate places.
"Have you found someone?" Kii sounded so eager, so earnest.
Her fingers curled tightly around ceramic sides and years of neglected hope mimed an ivy grip around her throat.
"I found him a long time ago."
His smile was as she remembered; it slipped below her ribs and pricked her beating heart, leaving behind a fresh mark still blazing. Mercy, she wanted to cry, but she had always treasured his smiles.
Unthinkingly, he never had mercy to spare for her.
Maybe it is a touch cruel, but she catches him off guard. Sooyun has learned since him and she is not quite so willing to let fear kill the seeds of dreams. Soft palms, warm and dry, cup his face, the shock of heat folded against coldkissed lines of chin and jaw loosening for an instant the tethers of reality. For once, she wants to dream beyond her skin, to reach past her limits and fit the final piece into its place, girl-child falling at last to woman.
Her mouth met his and he forgot to think. Flashes of sunlight filtered through his mind; spring pushing against winter ground, small hands and smaller feet carving art out of emptiness, shy smiles and kind courage. Sooyun made breathless by laughter, head resting, however briefly, on his shoulder. Sooyun kissing him now, lips tracing lost worlds onto his, showing him through a single stolen window all they might have been. All he might have had.
All that he would never know.
And then she was gone, that terrible wave of awe cresting within him waning, ebbing back into a nameless sea. He felt the loss acutely, but he could never find a word for it.
"It was always you."
"Think of me sometimes."
Notes: Original characters belong to Joanna and I; meant to be a series of snippets and oneshots featuring various aspects of love in honor of Valentine's Day (as this is a V-Day gift for Joanna), be they heartbreak, resolution, first kisses or confession. The hard moments or soft glances, slow lovemaking or dark intimacy, all those little things that love is composed of.
Summary: Sooyun & Kihyun --- we were too late.
we were too late
His smile is as she remembers; a bright song with straightforward chords, ever skipping jubilantly ahead without pause and without her. Like the air rushing beneath her leaps, the raw freedom of a moment suspended from time and gravity. The laws of stone and earth for a tiny instant held at bay by wonder and joy - impossible is his smile, is her heart that still flutters with all the familiarity of muscle memory. Not the same dance it once was, timid and bashful, a playful dream of yesterday scrawled on the backs of countless silences.
It stuns her that he can still chat as if there is nothing, but a table and two lattes between them. Sooyun knows better. There is an ocean of surrender that swirls in the hollow space of her collarbone, the strands of what if dusty and tangled on the spindle of fate, unspun and untouched.
The dull ache begins anew. His happiness is palpable, his hands steady. Faintly, she recalls a time when she had reached for those hands and found them full, interlaced with another girl's steps and another woman's future. Coffee fragrant and smooth scalds her tongue and burns the inside of her mouth; she welcomes it. It is a better pain than the old coals she tosses, ever tearing and scarring too-delicate places.
"Have you found someone?" Kii sounded so eager, so earnest.
Her fingers curled tightly around ceramic sides and years of neglected hope mimed an ivy grip around her throat.
"I found him a long time ago."
His smile was as she remembered; it slipped below her ribs and pricked her beating heart, leaving behind a fresh mark still blazing. Mercy, she wanted to cry, but she had always treasured his smiles.
Unthinkingly, he never had mercy to spare for her.
Maybe it is a touch cruel, but she catches him off guard. Sooyun has learned since him and she is not quite so willing to let fear kill the seeds of dreams. Soft palms, warm and dry, cup his face, the shock of heat folded against coldkissed lines of chin and jaw loosening for an instant the tethers of reality. For once, she wants to dream beyond her skin, to reach past her limits and fit the final piece into its place, girl-child falling at last to woman.
Her mouth met his and he forgot to think. Flashes of sunlight filtered through his mind; spring pushing against winter ground, small hands and smaller feet carving art out of emptiness, shy smiles and kind courage. Sooyun made breathless by laughter, head resting, however briefly, on his shoulder. Sooyun kissing him now, lips tracing lost worlds onto his, showing him through a single stolen window all they might have been. All he might have had.
All that he would never know.
And then she was gone, that terrible wave of awe cresting within him waning, ebbing back into a nameless sea. He felt the loss acutely, but he could never find a word for it.
"It was always you."
"Think of me sometimes."