sand between my fingers

Daehyun/Youngjae, Youngjae POV

Every day, I wake up in a sand bed filled endlessly with your glitter. Of eye crust trying to mould you in the fabric of my mind, because I missed the chance to touch you when I was awake. Painfully.

I still dream of you the same way we met. I wash up to shore, spluttering out of a depth entrenched with discreet tears and the relentless rain from above that tried to drown me. Six feet underwater, just a few inches above, only a rare few know the true symptoms of asphyxiation in menacing tides. There is no screaming as my lungs puncture with sodium; there is no flailing as my arms stumble to prop me up, only to be swallowed by the sea and submerge me all the more.

They said you were wealthy. They said you were the spoilt son of the well-to-do, who spoke smiles one hundred and twenty crotchets per minute. I sat by a hearty metronome that tapped legato into the air, and I never once noticed you for perhaps I was too busy trying to stay afloat. I could not buoy myself up if the morning air was not enough for me to breathe. I dreaded the mocking laughter, I dreaded the terror of being stomped back into sea, I dreaded being crushed by the currents of mocking laughter and being ripped of my name.

Stranded. I cradled myself and dared not move, lest they came for me. I was one-third shame, two-thirds a nobody, seven-eight time of wasted breaths, a freakshow sans oddity, and an utter disgrace. I spoke disjointed arpeggios and slurred my notes, cursed with a dysfunctional voice box while others flaunted their glistening music boxes.

I was laughed at. So much that I decided it was better off to become mute, but still, I was taunted for that. I was called broken, unfixable, worthless, absolute garbage. I was shaped purely by my inability to speak normally and every part of me became blemished consequently. I believed that.

They said you would not understand.

If so, why did you come to me me?

It was one night when I washed up ashore, when I teared up and I could take no more. And it was you who knelt by me. It was you who translated your smiles into oxygen for me to gasp. I was told never to believe someone would come save me because I was not worth it. So in your hold that night, torn inside out from my vocal chords I loathed and the inability to create anything beautiful, I could not comprehend why you lulled me to sleep. Someone like you, who owned a voice that broached staccato with ease and wove common time into your footsteps.

People loved you. And it puzzled me to no end as you scooped me up and carried me away from the malevolent, unrelenting waves, those that leech upon my skin and the tears in my eyes for supper.

Nightfall. A full-length pause, I bled the chromatic scale and an eerie trench of minors and incessant flats. Your iridescence slid through the wind and I remember blushing as you crouched over me. You asked me if I was okay. I'm sorry I could not reply.

Believe me when I say I shook harder under your care than when they twisted my footprints into that of the deformed. I tried to run from you but you prevented me from doing so, cheeky smile worn for the bluebirds had already warned you about me. A runner, this one. His only friend's Silence, a total recluse, won't speak with the sparrows, not even the crows.

You were all fortissimo and sheer optimism, while I reclined in poorly timed acciaccatura and a fifty seven bar rest. You grappled for a tissue and smiled even as my filthy, clumped lashes batted against your skin. I creaked an octave higher, meek and shy, while you dreamt in bass clef.

You stretched out your hand. I saw daylight drip through your fingers. We ate at a diner two blocks from school for you insistently grabbed my hand and I stumbled after you. You spoke enough for two when I struggled in the conversation, eternal examination that deemed my worth, unnatural pressure from my mutilated lips and the need to not seem ungrateful.

I was raised perpetually in winter where I befriended solely the December Solstice and its chilling gales, foregoing the bristling heat and how it seeps into skin.

But you brought me the seasons in washed jam jars. You dashed through the seasons with empty jars in arms, a trace of lavender dish soap remaining and a little of your spice spilt on the cover. You scooped miles of withering maple leaves, caught the scent of crisp firewood and broke a fallen twig into the first jar, by which you named Autumn. You sprinkled ticklish pollen, plucked the blooming cherry blossoms and cradled azalea aromas into the second, declaring it Spring. In the third jar, you filled it with seaside breeze, b sunlight and a warmth to last me a lifetime. This, you called Summer, your absolute favourite.

And one by one, you pried open my bashful fingers and placed the jars within my hand. As my palm was too small, you cupped my hand with your wrinkled ones and beamed at me. I gazed at your fingerprints left on the jar and I thought, perhaps, this was what it was like to be so hopelessly in love.

You accompanied me whenever I sat by the school foyer alone, away from the canteen with my stomach gurgling. You broke popsicle sticks and brashly laughed whenever I ate messily. I pleaded with you not to pick a fight when I noticed you seething at the demeaning insults I was used to. Eight beat laughter and counting, shimmering eyes, I told you it would do you no good to be seen around me but you still stayed, regardless. We sat on the swings at the desolate playground nearby and you turned it glistening neon with your smile alone.

Sometimes, you held my hand whenever you were impatient and I lagged behind you in the crowd. A few times, we fell asleep on one another's shoulder (you cackled when I drooled and I flushed hard). One time, you embraced me and asked me if we could stay like this for just a few minutes.

Then came a magnificent crescendo, and I found myself tangled within your quavers and ledger lines. It became frequent for you to cup my cheeks so I would look you in the eyes. Ambiguous touches, your nose nuzzled into my hair, I caught you staring a little too long in my peripheral version, but never dared to think more. You somehow found me every day even as I shrouded within the shadows, just begging for a day to pass without being noticed and subsequently tormented.

You taught me that I could reside in whichever season I desired. I adored Fall but I built a summer shed in June to be closer to you.

You said you heard not but saw volumes through my eyes. You said you felt my hundred miles per second pulse breach a hasty, terrified yet shockingly inaudible tempo in the air. You said... You said I was beautiful.

It was on a winter morning that you kissed me.

I turned and ran.

I wonder why I still dream of you so much when it was I who ran away. Perhaps I have always been crafting statues in your likeness with sawdust. This, I took from the bridge between you and me, the one that I sawed because I feared. I feared when you called me pretty. I feared I fell in love with simply the pity you had for me entrenched in your eyes. I feared the tingling brush of our fingers, the warm curl of your lips and the way you leaned in whenever you could not hear what I was saying. I feared most of all whether I was good enough for the one person who held three hundred and sixty five stratospheres per year.

I did not deserve you.

And so, tonight, I rebuild you with the sand cluttered in the corner of my eyes. I rehearse your name on my lips for the recital consisting of just you in the audience, the one I never dare to hold outside of my dreams. Jung Daehyun. And all I can do is wait for morning, for you to crumble into my hands, and for you to remain far, far out at sea.