some things are not so easily forgotten.
like the paradoxical nature of saltwater and how sometimes, it can feel like a third degree burn running down the larynx of one’s throat. like realising that human and fish are not so different, how one can run a trident through its chest and still watch its muscles twitch long after its heart has stopped. like that first touch of a woman from the capitol, her fingers running dangerously down one’s navel and how it can sometimes feel like saltwater, cold enough to bring about the shiver and yet it burns all the same.
like how the sound of ocean waves rushing ashore once soothed him, but now, all he hears are screams, gurgles, and that liminal deafness to follow when his head is pulled underwater. he learns, then, what it means to love and hate something at the same time.
see, beomseok’s not typically the sort to reminisce, but a ghost from the past brings back memories like the violent waves of a rising tide. and as he watches her, brushed locks falling down her pale shoulder like draping gossamer, he realises then that he, too, had been only a child, far too young to be dancing so intimately with the spectre of death. why, it had been at this very spot that he stood, leaning against the balcony as he begged for the capitol’s skyline to distract him from death’s kiss, a saltwater stain pressed upon the back of his left ear like a promise. breathtaking as the view is, it hadn’t worked then, too.
“you’d think,” in this pitiful way, he tries to be there for her, approaches her the way the capitol’s taught him how to—that is, weaponised distraction from the brutalities of their hellish president, “that with all the wealth the capitol has, that they’d be able to produce some better tasting wine.”
his gait is an easy saunter, wine glass balanced precariously between the base of his fingers, and that hint of a tease gleaming at the corner of his lips feels like that saturday night on that beach, all those years ago. they’d been a lot younger then, but she’d always possessed that twinkle in her doe eyes. ocean and moonlight. it begs him to look away, so he tips his glass pointedly towards the skyline, “at least the view is nice.” and there’s this rustle that exists between their picture perfect moments, when he’s finding his spot beside her, propping his arms against the balcony and he’s close enough to feel her against him, even without the skin-on-skin. he holds the wine glass at the tip of his fingers, studies the reflection of city lights against its curvature as his voice lowers to the sorts of whispers that hold a secret, “well, nothing like lighthouses from a beach, but…” the trail off begs an apology, so he offers it up in the form of twinkling smiles to accompany a fond memory.
( after all, is it not fitting to reminisce with a ghost? )
@mobiivs
