WHO: @theisaacking
WHEN: Wednesday, June 2nd, four days before the gallery fire
WHERE: In a meadow somewhere off campus
The afternoon had been a whirlwind, much like the others the pair of them had spend together since before they had even dated. Alek had lured Isaac out into a meadow, somewhere beyond campus. This wasn't something that was new to the pair of them, having always enjoyed being in nature together. It was where they met; the two of them frolicking through the fields of campus, completely bare both to their clothing and to any of the rules they were expected to follow. There had always been a certain innocence in it, and a certain vulnerability. Upon their meeting, there was a process of stripping down. It was a game at the time, a feat completed only by a self-assured whim, a challenge of sorts. Who would be the first to make the move? Alek would prove time and time again that she would be the first one to take on a challenge, the first one to prove herself. What she hadn't realized until later was that along with her clothes, she had stripped away some of the barriers she had kept between her and other people that day, when she met Isaac. And as the pair of them ran together in the open field of campus, it was freeing in a way she hadn't felt before.
Certainly, freedom is something that Alek had always sought after, and she had come to know it more than anyone else in her family. Freedom was something that she had managed to grasp onto for several years of her young life when she had moved to Russia; a small taste of its sweet serenity, and it was enough to continue craving it for the rest of her life. It was far away from her family, or the things they had expected of her. And despite her return to America, closer than she had properly been to her family in years, the frolicking around campus, the shared laughter between her and Isaac, the blissfully child-like glee they had shared as they tore off through the Luxor campus in the nude, and especially the person she would come to know Isaac King to be, it all created a kind of freedom that could withstand the proximity to her family. And it was in the Isaac King brand of Freedom that she had found a deep exhilaration within.
There was something so grounding about it as well. And feeling that way: finding a way to be present and focused outside of dance, wasn't something that Alek had properly known before Isaac. So, to be there with him now, to exist in that very moment with him and feel herself inside of her body and to know exactly what she had to let go of, truthfully, it reminded Alek what she had loved so much about existing so aloofly to everyone else in her life.
A few hours had gone by with the pair of them singing and dancing through the field, and despite being alone now, earlier in their visit to the nature was someone kind enough to film their recreation of the Till Forever Falls Apart music video. To anyone else, the idea might have been corny, but after weeks of singing the song and having fallen in love with it with Isaac, after resonating so deeply with its words and with the energy of the video resonating with all that their relationship had been in the last couple years, the two had agreed to take the time to make their own version of it. It had felt symbolic.
Their guest having left with their footage with the promise of sending it to them within a few days, Alek and Isaac were left sitting in the center of the field. Fingers laced with his and flowers tucked behind her ears, Alek could have spent hours speaking to Isaac, and for a while she did. Reflections of their relationship, multiple lighthearted quips, their playful back-and-forth, for the first time in several months, it hadn't felt as though they were playing within borrowed time. And for that reason, with where the conversation would inevitably need to go, Alek would be able to feel her heart breaking for what she would see as for the rest of her life.
"So," she hummed after a while, her grin still playing on her lips from how light and radiant the hangout had felt up until this point. However, she paused, and in that time, her lips pressed to the side, realizing where she was about to take their conversation. Her lashes fluttered as she lowered her gaze to their hands, still laced in the grass between them. She squeezed onto his fingers a little with her own. "I wasn't sure if I wanted to do this today, but..." she trailed off momentarily, lifting her pretty eyes up to see Isaac's once more, just one more time before she knew the happiness that still lingered in his eyes would dissolve before her very gaze.
"The wedding," she breathed, knowing that the two simple words would kill whatever buzz of excitement the two had been running on for the last few hours. "It's in a little over a week from now..." she muttered. Isaac knew very well when the wedding was. The two of them had kept it in the back of their minds for months; Isaac having always heard about the preparations. Without exactly being able to help it, her lips pulled down into a dreadful frown and she pulled her eyes away from his and back to their hands. She swallowed past her nerves.
"Isaac, you know, I... will never be able to properly explain to you what... even meeting you has done for me." She began, pursing her lips a little as she tried to resist the urge to cry. Releasing a choked sort of laugh she shrugged her shoulders a little bit. "You are... everything that I wish I could be..." She explained. "Everything I have ever wanted in my life..." her lip started to quiver slightly. "Everything that I wish that I came from, and hadn't only been blissfully joined with it in the time that I've spent with you." She hated this distinction in their worlds, she hated even having to say it in that way but it's all she could manage to think about in the weeks leading up to this wedding. Of course, in the sweetest, most admiring ways that she had always unconsciously admired in Isaac but as of late, especially in the dreadful ways that reminded her that it wasn't going to last. "There's nothing I can really say. I wish so much that I could have gotten something more than just a postponing of the wedding date." She paused before continuing bitterly. "And they would put it the day after prom." Her lips curled up in disgust, there was truly nothing that her and Isaac could have without it being tarnished by the very people Alek belonged to (no matter how hard she tried).
"I just really need you to know that I love you." She insisted, making sure to return her eyes to see his, to hopefully convey her feelings as well as she could despite what she was going to say. "I love you so much..." Nodding a little, she lifted a single shoulder. "And I think it would be best to..." trailing off, she continued to nod, more so uncomfortably, as she was unsure if she could drag herself through the rest of what she needed to say. "I think we need to end things here, Isaac." Finally speaking the words, Alek felt a shock surge through her body, a sudden ringing appearing in her ears; unable to tell if the words she had just spoken had been just spoken, or if she had said them a few minutes ago. "I'm sorry..." she uttered through a weakened whisper, shaking her head as though to deny any ill intent with how this day had gone.
