discord in the garden.
his shoulder brushes hers when he sits, the flash of the pale blonde of his hair in the corner of her eye drawing her attention back to him, as if there was anywhere else for it to go when his appearance in her vicinity is enough to make her hyper aware of him, attuned to each movement and shift and stretch. āheard that meteor did a number on you and your weird friends.ā
Taemin's texts to Sulli had surprisingly not been sent on a drunken, spur of the moment decision. It had been a completely sober spur of the moment decision, one that was dictated by boredom and the desire to procrastinate longer on an essay he was supposed to be writing for his folklore of magic class. He'd been drinking cups of black coffee in the middle of the library, but despite his apparent determination, he'd really only managed to crawl his way through about half of it. His mind kept wandering, half because he just really didn't care about the assignment, and half because his life as of late had been a mess and it was hard to keep himself from reexamining the pieces he was aware of again and again. No matter what way he puzzled together all of the information in his head, half of it still didn't make sense, and it frustrated Taemin to no end.Ā
The combination of which had sent him tugging out his phone, scrolling briefly through Twitter, and finally sending a text to Sulli asking her what she was up to and where. He hadn't really expected to get a reply, but the evidence was sitting in the inbox of his phone glowing up at him. A response meant he was welcome to come investigate, despite the fact that she'd probably deny it the minute he set foot on the cemetery. But he knew her, knew that if she didn't want to see his face that she just wouldn't have texted him back. Which had driven him to where he is now, wandering the outskirts of the cemetery, his eyes sweeping the dimly lit sprawl of land in search of her.Ā
Taemin finally manages to pick Sulli out from between the shadows underneath a tree and makes his way over, the grass crunching quiet underneath the soles of his sneakers, just a little overgrown, though it will be weighed down by snow in the coming months regardless. "Don't pretend like it wasn't." Taemin replies to her in turn, because he's long since learned the rules to this game. He doesn't want to pretend like he's playing, and it doesn't feel fun anymore. Everything just weighs down on him heavy, and he's too confused to figure out a way to slip out from underneath it all. Taemin pulls his hands out from the pockets of his jacket as he turns to sit next to her, one hand lifting to push down the hood of the sweatshirt he'd layered underneath.Ā
There's a stretch of quiet between them, one he doesn't bother breaking. They communicate instead through a shared bottle and their shoulders brushing together as he accepts it, lifts it to his lips and takes a long sip. He feels amped up, jittery from too much coffee, and so maybe the wine will help. Or maybe it will just turn him into an even bigger mess. Either way it'll probably be easier when his mind isn't quite as sharp, the fingers of his free hand trembling and he curls them into a fist to hide it as he takes one last sip before he passes the bottle back. "Yeah, well." Taemin answers her, and it really isn't much of an answer at all, but he's not entirely sure he wants to share just how raw, just how vulnerable the whole ordeal made him feel.Ā
It's not something he likes to broadcast in general, let alone when she's seemingly living to make his life feel like an even greater hell as of late. He never knew he'd been lodged in purgatory until Sulli came along and proved she could knock him down further, raise the flames higher, undeniably trap him in his own personal torment. "Heard you lucked out. Probably for the best, nobody deserves the misery of being mentally shackled to you." it comes out conversational as he leans back, shoulder pressing against the rough bark of the tree, eyes half focused on the graves spilling out before them.
