( blue fire burns best ) ; ⸺ + @grimbound !
fiddling with an led light and flag was all but required to keep her hands busy, but the same couldn't be said for her desperately wandering eyes. garam chews the corner of her lip, blinks heavy from her tired eyes, an incomprehensible buzzing between her ribs as her heart turned into a butterfly. or maybe it's more like the dragon and the stream... something big comes from, well, nothing, right? she watches jinyoung cross the grass, so focused, locked in as if it was less a nighttime field, less a silly game of capture the flag and more a battle. it's where she was... watching the game with the flames of the slowly, slowly quieting fire behind her. it's where she was when her world goes crooked again.
weeks since she'd told lucas she was going. weeks since he agreed and said to leave. she hadn't reached out. the quietest, loneliest weeks she had gone through in so long, and that's even with being almost always surrounded by others. but it felt good too, not to have to those badgering, bleeding questions.
lucas is a bitter fruit, and she was accustomed to it before, the sweetness and the bite. now, her taste buds don't crave the aftertaste. not tonight, not right now.
right now she can only taste beer. can only smell smoke... smoke and... she looks down at herself. at the white dress she wore (borrowed, of course), that was now rather covered. it's so stupid. her thoughts, she wonders why she's like this.
when she looks up, looks around to escape them (those stupid, stupid thoughts), she spots him instead— lucas.
it's really not fair how it's like a light switch. like a key that sticks in and winds up her posture like a little doll as she straightens slightly, holds his eyes with dancing flames hiding her pupils. like a cat in the night, lit up yellow in pools of dark. the frustration has long fizzled, she gave it weeks and normally it just took days. but there is something. curiosity? and something worse, harder. something she wanted to kill, told him she would when she said she would go.
frozen to the spot, she fights the instinct to go to him. she bites her lip, looks down away from him to where her hands fiddle with his her jacket.
then she looks back to lucas, again. hey— she mouths, silent. maybe he would ignore her. maybe they could go back to leaving each other alone like they both said. if he said nothing, it would be an answer.