Sandbox. — It was curial for them to anger at each other and throw around words and emotions like children with toys in a sandbox. (with seramiamor)
Truth be told, Taeil disliked sharing arguments with Sera. At least not in a tone and context that morphed words into bullets and knives, and felt as though they were physically lodged in his chest with bare hands. Slowly tearing his fragile heart asunder. Though no discussion which came before had felt as hopeless as this.
The apartment had been warmer that evening. Quietude stirring in the air, yet bright in light of year's end. Her couch was warm on his back too, though her fingers a frigid contrast on his nape; a blanket for comfort pinched beneath tiny bites of frost. Yet Taeil sought and found no consolation in the heat hidden between his vertebrae, and even less in the weight pinning down his thighs. Instead an anxious gaze scanned the face of the woman framed in his lap. Fraught silence sitting on his lips while he searched for any sign at all of her being but a vivid fragment of dreamstate.
But much to his dismay, Sera stared right back. And blinked, talked—argued. Ebbed and flowed above him like stirred ocean shores with her tumultuous emotions. She balanced fear on his heartstrings with a tangible grin and asked him why it were there–why he wasn't holding her gaze for long, why he wouldn't touch her even with full consent. Suddenly self-aware, Taeil knew he couldn't lie to her. He could never lie to her even if he tried.
"You're just acting really weird, Sera. You're too pliant than what I'm used to. Too honest, and needy." He'd said, carefully. Both fists laid on each side of his thighs, clenching and relaxing–unwilling to embrace her as custom. Claim her as suggested.
"It's freaking me out. We were never like this."
Like this; a hushed cluster of limbs and entangled breaths, her knees nimble and blunt on hipbones that reached up for her own, as restlessness guided their grip across vast expanses of each other in all directions possible. Just like this, with their racing hearts tethered so tightly under the caging of their chests it was almost painful. Yet it felt safe all the same; safe enough to test their teeth in forbidden fruit uninterrupted–that their secret would remain only a murmur shared between them when the universe peered elsewhere.
But when Sera leveled her gestures and sought meaning in his gaze yet again, it became clear to Taeil that their murmurs hadn't once been shared at parallel since the very beginning of their agreement. Something was amiss still, and it was going to cost them.
"Are you telling me you don't want it?" Sera regarded Taeil quietly, facial expression softening until resting flat as she observed him with her nails on his pulse.
"It's not just about what you want now." Taeil attempted to argue, "It's about what we already had..."
Sera only considered this, then retracted herself entirely. Vacating the lap she'd probably hoped would keep her company into the new year. "It's funny how I feel like the rejected one now." She admitted. "Oh, well."
When Taeil first met Sera, he was plagued by an existential crisis and equally haunted by the mere existence of a fresh diploma in his hands. He remembers it a hot summer noon, specifically so because his balls had never seen as much sweat in twenty-something years as they did that day–and he was a college athlete. Standing amongst close to a thousand virgins in a tight campus hall felt as though he were in a rainforest from the waist down. Sweltering, and zoic. But his determination to win was stronger than his desire to strip down to his bones on spot.
Every year the school oversaw an annual robotics competition for any who were willing to participate, and rearranged a random hall into a bloodbath for nerds, gamers and freaks alike. Though despite their micro differences, what brought them all together was their religious belief in aliens and robots, like Christians saw God and angels. And money. In any case, an event Taeil himself couldn't bear missing.
The ink had mysteriously ran out midway through him signing up, and he had to wait through ten whole minutes before someone in the back line had remembered the spare pen buried at the bottom of their backpack. An omen of his misfortune, but he'd ignored it for the beckoning charm of the prize money he planned to buy premium Pokemon cards with. And the pretty girl he were up against, Sun Sera, or something like that.
He'd shouted dibs on her amongst his friends before they'd begun, and was damning his idiocy with every ounce of effort he could possibly muster by the end of the night. The second his robot went down with no chance of return, she'd ruined him; stripped him bare of his remaining pride rather than the clothes on his back. And knew it. Had thrown him a knowing feline smirk before walking off for her prize.
Little did she know that at that same moment, she'd unknowingly sealed some long years of childish rivalry to her name. If only both of them knew beforehand how it all would escalate–Taeil often wondered if he still would've chosen Sera then.
The fight me's and the fuck off's and leave me alone's had quickly become the backbone and essence of their friendship, something peculiar only they could understand. She wanted nothing to do with him while he wanted everything to do with her, but somehow it was mutual. He would've willingly nestled himself into the most unforgiving cracks of bleeding Hell's ends to find her, no matter how far she hid. If only to get the rematch he believed he deserved, Taeil sought her out to the point of blatant obsession. She let him do it.
But life often does only what it wills and before Taeil could notice, his passion gave chase for personal attachment to Sera. Then, like seconds turned to minutes and minutes turned to hours, his heart had betrayed him–coaxed attachment into a degree of infatuation he could only keep hidden for the sake of preserving their unusual connection. Which was much more important to him than anything else, as it was all he knew. All he ever wanted.
To him they were already a layered puzzle that needn't get more complicated. Every time they met, it felt like walking into an empty room clad in an infinite maze, of which all ends yielded a door to a new, alien emotion to explore in a pair. But a pair had never equalled to anything beyond friendship for Taeil, even if for every time Sera smiled because of him, his heart had longed for more. The pain of self refusal was more bearable than that of accompanied solace and misunderstanding. He wanted only for her to accept him as much as possible, and that would've been enough.
Better necessary than love itself; an intimate understanding of the melancholy they individually experienced the same.
The flattery of a kiss could never compare nor plug the void for long. Why was that such a complicated intention for her to fathom?
The way down from her apartment was a steep and uncomfortable contrast against his long legs. Winter rising from chilled concrete to the ceiling gripping him like a second skin and stifling his lungs as a plastic bag would around the neck. Every exhale was tangible on his lips how a raging bull snorts steam through its nostrils.
But as if it were organically coded without room for error in his blood cells still, Taeil, cradled no longer by warmth or the need to be compliant, followed Sera's descent to the bottom of the stairwell. Almost tripping on the way down, and bellowing words that held no other purpose than for spite alone.
He'd confessed his honest confusion to Sera, pouring explanations and anxiety through gritted teeth only for Sera to believe none of it. Though he didn't doubt once that she knew it the truth. She owed him this much.
She was diligent and quick on her feet, petite shoulders squeezed tight with tension underneath the dark curtain of her hair. Timid snowfall caught at the luscious, curled ends as it did in his own lashes. He was chaste on frozen toes, but his strides were longer and stronger and as he always had, met her just before she’d completely escaped.
The argument unraveled at full force as the sun unleashed its rays upon having risen to the peak of the skies, and Taeil drowned hopelessly in the beat of all of it. Engaging in a knife fight without purchase of blades.
They were never supposed to end up like this either. Miserable knots of rage and regret a disarrayed twine of vines in his ribcage. A thick well of tears sticking in her throat, building as rainfall would in a dam, unable to escape from glossy eyes that pleaded for him to stop. It felt impossibly wrong for her to look at him like that–made his skin crawl with profound unease.
Yet at the same time, Taeil managed to find necessity in the havoc–possibly as a form of denial of the negativity that made him feel sick to his stomach. He'd heard opportunity and potential for something hopeful in the frail shriek of his name, coming from an exasperated Sera.
It felt close to an epiphany if he'd ever seen one; the sort of clarity that often surfaced only post climax. He suddenly understood why they had to have these moments—why change was important for the development of their friendship, and what other layers sat underneath the veil of that title shared between them.
It was curial for them to anger at each other and throw around words and emotions like children with toys in a sandbox, as this was what allowed them to dig deeper into their hearts and find the things they actively sought for within one another's company.
To complete the maze after long hours spent colliding headfirst to no avail. To find what they truly needed from this friendship, and for Taeil, it was simply a matter of being accepted by Sera. Of having access to more of her world he so badly wanted to be a part of.
To understand her better, so he could understand himself better, too.
Cold split at his dried lips, and her desperate cry forced him to yield from explosiveness entirely. An incoming draft of air swept away their petty argument as if it had never been; innocently stirring and rustling trees and tiny yard bells of neighbors nearby. He felt them watching from above, alongside the sun. But as Taeil basked in the terrifying enormity of his own realization, he had only heart for the erratic surges of Sera's breathing–the dry chafe of her small hands clenching more from frustration than the cold.
He pulled her into his arms and wondered if understanding equalled to immediate willingness to accept changes. But her pulse overlapped even his own with force full enough to dull the mourn of loss of what once was, for now. So he overlooked the thought in favour of the warmth she brought back to his spine, outperforming even that of the sun and her couch combined.
Finally, at length he croaked, "I'm sorry, don't leave. Let's just go back upstairs."
