𝓣HE FROST REMEMBERS ࣪˖ ִִ h.k
artblock has one weakness: creation. it just so happens that you decide to make your final hurrah, the greatest work of your life, out of winter’s most gentle gift. and, the frost remembers. . ۫︎ ︎ ︎︎
⺡ ࣪˒ ( ☃️ ) ･ 2k
𝓹airings ˒ snowman!kai x art student!reader
𝒢 ; fluff ˒ angst
𝔀arnings ˒ fluff, angst, mentions of past deaths, chubby!reader, kai is in fact a man made of snow, more of a drabble, not proofread yet (i’ll get to it when i wake up from this big ol nap hehe)
✎୭ ashlynn's note i want to thank @aduh0308 and her lovely brain for this one! this was such a beautiful idea that i honestly was so nervous about executing. i hope i pulled it off well enough!! it was supposed to have a way, way heavier end, but honestly as much as i love the poeticism of that ending, it just wasn’t right for this fic. hehe now i press post and knock out!
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The snow winks at you differently, today.
Jaw tight, you kick and tread through heavy snow piles. The air is like glass on your cheeks and snowflakes wet your head where they come falling down over you, but faulty paint strokes and the heavy weight of a paintbrush in your hands smear over it.
No matter how you plan before sitting down to create, it just falls flat. The colors are flat and wrong, the shapes don’t bloom into story, and…
None of it looks good. It’s as simple as that. You are shit at it, and it’s what you’ve chosen to do for the rest of your life. When you’re not able to make something worthwhile, even for a grade?
You don’t create much for school, and you create nothing at home. All that will come from you putting brush to canvas is wasting the hours of your day away. All that will come is creating something that further solidifies your failings. Maybe you aren’t the worst, but you are a lifetime away from the best. That doesn’t get you anywhere; so what is the point of it? It’s pointless. You are doing something pointless with your life, and you are only going to hate it more each time you drag your feet into the classroom you once loved to slather paint on canvas. And then, when you take that long walk back home that leaves you an awful amount of time to think, you come to one conclusion.
You can’t create. Not if you want to preserve that talent that you once had. Or, at least your ability to believe that you have it. If you pick up your tools and from it create something awful, then your fear becomes real. So, you can’t.
Today, you’ll create your last piece. Something impermanent, that you can kick down and move on from. Then, you’ll drop out, and find something else. Maybe someday, you’ll find what you used to feel for your first love again. You hope so; you’ve watched it leave you with each frustrated swipe of the brush and felt it go when your throat would tighten at the sight of your finished projects. Losing that love is something featured in stories since the dawn of humanity. But, losing this love is different. You can’t go and speak with it, nor can you plead with it, and you certainly cannot touch it to drag it back. It’s something wholly inside of yourself, and you find it impossible to reach. You’ve tried forcing yourself to paint, you’ve tried breaks, and you’ve tried waiting for inspiration. Still, it’s so far from your touch.
You blink a stray snowflake out of your lashes and stop. The little patch of snow is flat and twinkles with morning—it’s perfect. For a moment, you admire it. Then you get to work.
Handfuls of snow melt through your cotton gloves. At some point, your fingers go tingly and then unfeeling. The snow is powdery and loose, but that’s no matter to you. You compact it down into something solid and pack it into smooth-edged shapes. Around you, just beyond the thick focus that you let fall over you when you work, people bustle by. Some stop to watch you, the ice crystals like glitter captured in the form of the sculpture catching their eyes as they pass. They move on when you don’t entertain them, though.
All you know is the sweet song of a mourning dove cooing, and the working of your hands. You don’t think much further than that; what comes from your carving and shaping is a misty, shimmering wisp of consciousness. Whatever had been brimming in your blood, you let it go—let it take shape.
You give a little here, adding chunks where it’s missing, and take a little there, carving when your heart suggests it. It grows and claims space for itself. It seems that it’s never enough; every time you intend to take a step back, you find just one more thing that needs your fixing.
When you do finally dust off your gloves, snow clinging to the fluff, you’re stricken to the spot—hit right in the gut with a roll of something you haven’t felt in so long. In the angles of the shoulders, you see flashes of resting your head there like they were built just to hold you. In the column of the neck, you feel the pressing of your lips against the warm skin down the side of it. In the pretty splay of the hands, you feel the appreciative, devoted pressure of hands roaming and kneading the plusness of your belly and thighs, holding them with reverence even when you didn’t see them as something to revere.
And, in the face, you see him held everlasting in the wintery serenity of the snow: your dead boyfriend.
Tracing the lines of him, you swallow hard. He’s exactly as he was in life, but he is unmoving. His eyes are all twinkling with ice particles, and not with the alive, benevolent light that you remember. When you tug off a glove, itching to feel the shape of his cheek once more, he’s sickeningly cold to the touch.
You run your finger over his cheek, as soft as you remember it, and down the length of his nose, heart aching at the little bump on the bridge of his nose as you find that just as you remember it, too. Looking up into his eyes, you can almost feel the weight of his gaze the way it feels in your memory.
His lips are crisp against your mouth. Maybe you look mad to a passerby, but you want to remember the shape of his lips, too. You linger there for a few moments. Just long enough for you to pretend, and then you let your lashes flutter back open and bring your mouth away from the snow.
Sitting still, lifeless, he does not smile that easy smile he should. The one he used to, when you’d steal his lips in a chaste kiss. Your heart, having soared up into the snow-heavy clouds as light as air, sinks. Of course, he doesn’t. The only place that his smile still lives and breathes in is your memories. You just ache to see it somewhere else at least once more. That’s all.
Tugging your glove back on to save your pale fingers, you try to dull the twinging in your chest and the bitterness that closes around your throat. You’ll go home, and you’ll begin trying to forget your art. You don’t kick it down like you’d come here intending to, though. Not this one. What a beautiful last work it was. Huffing a curling breath of frosty, silver air, you take one last look at him.
From his lashes, clumps of dusty snow fall like fairy dust. You furrow your brows, and more comes tumbling down. It crumbles and crumbles, falling from his eyes to reveal deep chocolate, and then from his face to reveal warm flesh, and then he shakes it off the rest of him.
He shakes it off the rest of him.
Your mouth goes dry, looking up at his eyes, and he looks at you back.
“Love?”
The sound comes from his chest like both a potent balm and the sharpest blade. It melts into your skin and nurses the hurt there, and it cuts them right back open. Hearing the name you’ve not heard for so long in his voice—you reel.
“Kai?” you say. Your voice wobbles like your legs do. Aside from the both of you, the rest of the world goes hushed and still.
He furrows his brows, bringing a hand up to caress your cheek. Your skin prickles at the warmth. He’d been so, so cold just a moment ago. “What’s wrong? Why do you look like you’re about to cry?” he asks.
You want to sit here all shaken, but you can’t. Not when he’s standing before you in the flesh. Standing before you real. Opening up your arms, you crush him between them and press your face into his chest. Puffing your breaths, your nose and cheeks sigh relief at the warmth that seeps out from him, and in that you know he is solid.
“Woah,” he says, trailed off by a soft laugh. Kai wraps his arms around your waist and rests his cheek on the top of your head. “Hugs, baby.”
For a few moments, something between just a split second and an eternity, you hold him and he holds you. It snows and snows down on you. When you finally pull back enough to speak to him, you say, “You’re real. Oh my god, you’re fucking real.”
With a raise of his brows, he says, “I’m real. Right here. I’m right here.” He runs a quick hand through his hair and drags his hand down his face to show it.
Opening your mouth, you close it right back up to decide which of the infinite things you want to ask him. “I…” you start. “Kai, you were dead. You were dead, and now you’re standing… right here in front of me. I don’t…”
In the sweet, dorky way that tugs at memories, one corner of his lips turn up into a slight smile. “I guess I was. But I’m here now, aren’t I?” He takes your cheek in his hand. “I never left you, darling. Maybe you couldn’t see me like this, but I never did. I promised you that, didn’t I?” When your face crumples, an awful twisting of your features that you fight to contain, he curls his fingers over your hand and brings it up to his cheek. “Feel. Feel, I’m real, aren’t I? Don’t cry. You don’t have to cry, because I’m here.”
Your heart thunders and storms, and your cheeks sting with tears. Swallowing it all down, you say, “I missed you so much, Kai.”
He reaches up to brush snowflakes off your hair. “I know. I missed you too.” When his eyes fall on you and your shivering self, he says, “I was there with you the whole time.”
It hadn’t felt like that. If he was alive inside you, you didn’t feel it. All you felt was hollow. And if he was in the world around you, that felt empty, too. But, he’s here now, and it doesn’t feel so much the same. “How?” you say, shaking your head. You wish you could have felt him. “Where?”
“Everywhere, love. You didn’t go one day where I was not there. In the frost, I was there.”
You don’t know what that means. You couldn’t even begin to imagine how that might be possible, or if it’s even the truth, or if this is some kind of miracle spun with the silver threads of the fates. Whatever it is, he stands in front of you now. Nothing else really matters much but that.
“Do you want to go home?” you ask. Out here, this moment feels fleeting. All you want is to be there, in the same place where you’d made your lives together, so that you can solidify it and keep it safe from the world.
Peppering kisses all about your face, he snorts. “Look at your nose. You should’ve been home hours ago.”
You let your eyes flutter shut in the onslaught of his lips against your skin. “I know,” you mumble. Then, you would’ve snarked about his worrying. Kai was always worrying over you, and you’d crinkle your nose and demand that you’re doing fine.
Like this, though, you don’t mind his doting so much. Not now, and not ever again, you think. Not when he, hewn from snow and brought to life by your kiss, is utterly real and utterly alive in front of you. Not when he is the art in your life.
You think you might go home and pull out your paints.
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✎୭ ashlynn's note AHHH i don’t know how to feel about this one.
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