There's a better version on my LJ with the lyrics and song links included. The link should be up on my profile by now or you could just click on the 'Homepage' link.
i
magic hours – explosions in the sky
It's not quite love.
You like the crevices her unguarded glances betray and the gaps between her rare smiles and the sound of her hair rustling in a sudden breeze and the way it all adds up perfectly to make sense to you. You like that she's a hard little gem to cut through and you like that she's a severely tangled knot of complexities and contradictions and how she makes your head spin just from counting the numbers.
And therein lies the crux of the problem.
You want to believe it's love. At first sight, second or even third.
"I love you."
"Are you drunk?"
It's the wrong time, it's the wrong place and you're all wrong for her. She sees the widening gulfs between the discrepancies in both your hearts, yours and hers, but you see a reflection in a clear pool which ripples whenever she shakes her head in dismay at every folly you commit. This time, it's you who's shaking because it's getting darker and darker and colder and colder and she's slipping faster and faster out of your hands and into the shadows. You know that trust's an issue between your empty words and hers full of wariness but you still hang on to the noose, repeating it over and over like a mantra for the wretched soul.
"I love you."
~*~
ii
of angels & angels – the decemberists
It's not the storms that scare her, he finds out soon.
It's the aftermath.
She comes by to visit him on a Thursday when most of his neighbors are at work and the ramshackle apartment he inhabits reeks of closed spaces. As the day progresses, he's spent most of their hours alone on snide comebacks in return for her attempts at conversation. It's been two months since that eventful tournament and it will be two more until he'll be deployed for military service.
He runs a hand through his soon-to-be-besmirched mop of hair and wonders if she'll like him any better without it.
But before he can ask, he realizes that she hasn't spoken one measly bit of a word in about… thirty minutes?
She's perched on the lone stool in his kitchen, her palms cupping her chin and eyes glazed over with something melancholy. The harshness of the steel in her bones seems to have given way to clover and moss, softer and sweeter, easier to wrench free from their roots. He snaps his fingers at point-blank range to test it further.
"Sorry. Just spaced out for a while there." She offers, with a faint blush.
"Obviously. Was I that bad?"
The pink in her cheeks darkens slightly. "Sympathy didn't work."
Neither would empathy or apathy, he mentally concludes for her. Safety was the way to go. Always.
"I told you before, you didn't have to waste your time here." But he shoves his hands inside his pockets so she doesn't see them tremble at the tenacity of the lies he's about to spout. "I don't need to be 'cheered up'."
Naturally, she looks disappointed and this only makes the trembling worse. "Oh."
"Sorry."
She still remains, locked into place like a pendulum without its pivot. This time, he stops worrying about his hair and begins to want to feel what it would be like to run his fingers through hers instead. The steadily decreasing light paints it a warm russet tone.
"I… I kinda thought you needed a friend at a time like this."
He can't believe what he's hearing, that she uses the word 'friend'.
"A friend."
"Yeah." As if she senses the palpitations rushing into his voice from his racing pulse and quivering voice, she drops her own to whisper. "I'm sorry about last time."
He can't answer. He hadn't been thinking right then so he had only himself to blame now.
"We could still stay friends, even after you've… gone." He recognizes the old remorseful toss of her head. "Somehow, that doesn't sound right."
Before those darker-than-his eyes are hidden beneath long thick lashes, he glimpses them as the street-lights switch to life outside. It takes less time for him to recognize the untold lie in those twin orbs. Almost immediately, she shifts her gaze upwards and meets his. Exposed, she once again starts to recede into herself where no one, not even her beloved, can catch her.
"… I'm so sorry, Hwoarang."
"Stop apologizing."
He brushes her protests aside with his lips on hers.
The storms arrives, lightning speeds through his veins, thunder drowns out everything but the sighs she exhales as she lies beneath him over his sheets with her head resting on a stray pillow, coffee-colored hair fanning out over creamy white cotton. It's a first for her and he takes full advantage of it.
When he wakes up later, it's just as he fears.
The space beside him is empty.
The sun has gone.
~*~
iii
on fire - switchfoot
The next time they meet, it's already been two whole years and he almost doesn't see her eyes from the fluorescent neon lights of the city reflected in her new glasses. The silence is awkward, especially given the fact that he's slung an arm over the pretty grad student working in registration for the summer. A simple hello could possibly suffice.
"So you're blind now?"
Then again, nothing goes as planned and he's never been good with hospitality. She frowns, probably contemplates testing the results of her training on him for all he knows, but chooses to shove past him and etch her name in an angry scrawl on the required papers. Beneath the too many layers of denim, he notes her body's tautness, the same as it was when he'd first taken her.
"I guess you didn't stop by for another visit, did you?" he enquires, irony dripping through every word.
She turns back and flees.
Later that night, he lies on the bed in his hotel-room and curses at the scorch marks she's left in her tracks on him, phantom as they are. Despite the cracks in his armor, he knows that he was healing just fine before she showed up and ruined everything at a distance with her flaws, her secrets flapping about on her sleeves like those clichéd hearts, and the beauty in her darkest corners that only he knew about. A beauty and mystery that cut and healed at the same time, leaving him with bruises to secretly, shamelessly, prod and poke so that they'd never go away, no matter how soothing or distracting the balm.
It's a woman like her, the girl she'd grown out of, who tempts him deeper and deeper into the labyrinth, into her garden of concealed desires, every dragonfly dream crystallized for eternity under covers of cool silk. In turn, it's his dream, his undisclosed fantasy, to set them free from their cocoons and finally metamorphose into reality.
But when he's not dreaming, he's coming to grips with life's distinct brand of cruelty, the type that has him measuring his worth in the notches he scribes on his bedpost after each fruitless night of hedonism.
At eight o'clock, he knocks meekly at her door.
At ten, he begins pacing the hallway however much he knows she's too sore to answer.
Eleven chimes and he finds himself waking up on the carpet he'd fallen asleep on earlier. It's her hand that's shaking him by the shoulder and he's thankful for the new burn marks he's going to have to add to a growing collection.
~*~
iv
shining – kristian leontiou
He wonders how many hours it has been since he was left to die here alone, choking on his own blood.
There's a cold spell of thoughts swirling about his mind, like what the hell just happened to Kazama, a pity he'd come so far at this point, how disappointed Baek would be and his last words to Julia.
"See ya soon."
He would've sworn at his carelessness except that his throat hurt so bad the pain was almost blinding when he swallowed. With nothing better to do than lie hopelessly still and gaze at the pitch black void about to envelope him in its tightening embrace, he waits and remembers and recalls and regrets and bemoans.
Dark, come soon.
A hand appears and wipes some of the dirt and sweat off his forehead. He's quite sure that it belongs to a divinely gatekeeper of sorts, sent down or above the earth to lead him to his next destination, a trial where his sins and deeds would be laid out for him to judge. However, a face follows and it's distinctly human and concerned. The buzz of more voices differs greatly from the ones whispering in his ear earlier.
" – multiple burns on the chest and arms…"
"A few broken ribs in here too."
"Get him in."
It's either gravity playing tricks on him or he's actually being lifted up somewhere. A smooth sheet lines his back when he lands. A gurney, an ambulance, flashing red lights and sirens, the truth hitting him hard and what if he'd never make it through the tunnel…
Another voice joins the melee, a rough baritone lilted with concern belonging to his master, urging him to keep fighting like he's been taught to for so long.
The second voices calls out nothing but his name repeatedly. This voice is frantic and feminine, not to mention veiled by welling tears. From what he can glimpse through rapidly blurring eyes, her hair is loose and disheveled and veiling the rest of her fragility. With the last of his strength, he reaches towards her and the tips of their fingers meet in three seconds of a gentle embrace before hers are dragged further down onto his palm and away from him completely as the numbing darkness claims him.
He dreams of dreams he's never dared to before.
~*~
v
give it away – deepest blue
Belying his nonchalant attitude towards most things, Hwoarang isn't one to miss out on any given practice session, bearing his latest scars like medals from an ill-fought war.
There are exceptions.
He comes across her one night, on his way to the dojang. A cozy little café off the side of Sarang3 street scouted by struggling artists and hopelessly affected loners is where she sits alone at a table with frosted plastic cup of caramel liquid clutched in her hands. His mouth dries and his knuckles press hard against the glass.
Maybe it's the gawping but he receives a smile.
Leaving behind his training schedule at the door, he walks in dazedly towards her. He can taste the sparks trapped in the air. They glimmer like passing comets around the tarnished wings he imprints on her back and explode within him as soon as her fingertips dance along his wrist in a duet with his ascending heartbeat.
"I never understood what you saw in me."
He doesn't either. He never has.
With her bangs framing the corners of her face, she's still hiding. But inch by inch, the shadows are receding and for once, he sees the light he's often dreamt of. It's a few tendrils at first that creep out in defiance of the stone walls she roams behind, then it's the sound he recognizes, the lyrical haunting of a lonely flute and the enchanting echoes of enigmatic wind-chimes. Here is a song he understands, the same one he plays to himself to lull the yearning pangs to sleep where he can escape.
Carefully, with a tender touch so as not to shatter her instantly, he moves in, slips past the soft downy waves and caresses the warmth in the glow. And strand by strand does she unravel, leaning into the crook of his hand, the small smile like the curve of the rising sun over the horizon.
He asks her the same question, prepared for the outcome nonetheless.
"I don't know."
He expected that and reluctantly begins to release her. A hand stops him in a gentle yet firm grip.
"But I want to."
It's all he needs to break loose. It's all she wants him to be, wild and uncontainable, a blazing flame that burns as bright as the humblest candle-light. The storm waltzes on.
It's not quite love.
Not yet.