this weight on our shoulders (koi + ev)

[august vance d7b [Bella]]

Koi dreamed of an enormous ship in pieces underwater. He stood watching while a group of workers were stitching the sides together with thread. They matched up the wood like bits of a puzzle and pushed the needle through the edges piece by piece. The needle was as long as an arm.

He asked them, out of curiosity, “What are you doing stitching up the sides like that? Why not use nails?”

And their leader replied, “If we pull the seams tight enough, this thing will fly like a balloon.”

Koi shook his head, confused. “But you’re wrong. That boat’s too heavy to fly. And anyways it’s missing pieces.”

But the men kept working and he didn’t push it.

———

He awoke to the sound of quiet, steady breathing and rolled over to see Evelyn slumped against his closet, her head cocked sideways into her shoulder, her mouth parted slightly. Frowning, he rubbed his eyes and sat up in bed, checked the watch on his bedside. Six in the morning. His folks would have already left for work.

It had been days since they’d met with Ophelia at the ship and still it burned to remember how helpless he’d felt about the whole thing—Ophelia’s obstinance, Evelyn’s drunkenness, his inability to solve everything. For days he had rehearsed in his head what he’d say to her, but when they were face to face his lines had crumbled. He was afraid of her. He was afraid of the way she could push Evelyn around; he hated how she toyed with both their lives like they belonged to her, like stories she could rewrite the way she wanted.

He could join their ship, or she could leave and never come back. How easily Evelyn’s tyrant of a sister had narrowed their futures into two hallways, both equally dreary. Maybe before, he could have pictured himself on that boat. It used to be a symbol, drifting out there in the dock: adventure, freedom, romance. Now, though, he pictured Ophelia on it and it just looked like hell.

Though there was a slice of heaven anywhere Evelyn was. Koi felt it still, despite his unease that she couldn’t stay sober when he’d needed her most. It had hurt him when she showed up like that, and even now he felt cautious when he looked at her, like he was frozen in place. He spoke to her softly, arms crossed over his bare chest.

“You didn’t have to sleep there. I could have moved over.”

[Stare]

all i want is to feel my heart beating
i'm beating it to death
i remember when running forever
was the only escape i could get

Evelyn wasn’t quite sure when she’d fallen asleep.

She hadn’t meant to. She hadn’t been sure at all why she’d decided to yet again sneak into Koi’s room in the middle of the night, only knowing that something in her chest ached and being away from him seemed to be making it worse. As she had stepped through the familiar window, the ocean wind kissing the bare skin on the back of her neck and urging her forward, Evelyn had known that something had changed. Everything about her presence in his room had seemed forbidden, the eerie feeling that she wasn’t welcome eating away at her confidence until she’d simply slid down against his closet, leaned her head back, closed her eyes, and listened to the sound of his breathing.

The ache eased, just a little.

It was his movement that stirred her from her half dreams, sore and startled at having fallen asleep in the first place. She rubbed above her eyes and then winced as she attempted to stretch out the stiffness in her sides. Gaze drifting over to him, there was suddenly nothing in the world more tempting than sinking beneath the covers at his side and sleeping in until noon. But the tension she had detected in the night wasn’t gone, and it felt as thought she’d somehow managed to put oceans between them.

She supposed she was lucky that she was a master at crossing oceans.

“You mean move over onto the floor, like you did last time? I guess I figured it was my turn.” She clambered to her feet, joints popping as she pulled her hands up over her head and toward the sky. Dropping her arms to her side, Evelyn eyed Koi almost warily. Honesty felt appropriate, though it scared her beyond all belief. “And I wasn’t sure… if I could.” Her eyes darted away, focusing through the window on where sunlight was bleeding over the horizon and into the new day. “If you’d want me to.”

Evelyn knew that she’d let him down, knew that the easiest thing now would probably be for him to just turn his back and leave their complicated situation far behind. But she needed him. She wasn’t quite sure when it had happened, sometime between cliff-diving and drunken escapes and closet confessions, but it had. Koi had become like another sea to her. He was something she could always return to, something that reliably made her happy. There was only one other person in the world who’d mattered that much to her, and he was six feet under. She couldn’t lose Koi, too.

Evelyn turned her palms toward him a little helplessly, feeling more vulnerable than she had in all her life.

“I’m sorry.”

lyrics by the wealthy west, beautiful table by phresh ♡

[august vance d7b [Bella]]

“I’m sorry.”

Koi had told her once to never be sorry again. She didn’t need to. Though if he were perfectly honest, he had thought one was in order for this. He could feel her remorse in the distance between them; it chilled the air. Part of him wanted to scoop her up in his arms and pull her under these covers with him and hold her against his body until she knew that he would never leave. But all he could do was stare at her standing there in front of him, palms open, waiting. Hearing her apology had called a sickening feeling into his gut. Something ugly, unfamiliar. Something like anger. Something like moving to sit down and having the chair pulled out from under you. He was ashamed of it.

Was that what he’d wanted, an apology? Had he thought that would fix it?

Maybe.

In his stomach there were still tangles, left over from when she’d made him feel sober and alone. From the indecision he still felt. He didn’t know how to ask her to loosen them. He looked at the floor, hated the way he was reminding himself to speak kindly. Six a.m. was too early to talk about this, but it was all he could think about.

“I need to know where you stand with this. With me.” His voice croaked like his throat was tangled, too. "I’d been thinking before, you know, maybe I could live there with you. But after meeting her—" his lip curled at the thought of Ophelia and he rubbed it with the heel of his hand. “You know, I don’t know.” He grasped for something more concrete to say.

“I hate the way she talks to you.”

She meant too much for him to be sitting so far away, feeling stiff and empty in the cold air slipping through the window. He stretched his shoulders upward and sighed, then slid off the bed with the blanket pulled over his shoulders. He crossed the two steps’ distance towards Evelyn and wrapped the blanket around the two of them, pulling her into his bony chest. With every second of it Koi could feel the warmth melting him, and he pulled her closer until he was almost squeezing, fingers splayed behind her shoulders, resting his chin on the top of her head. Who was he kidding, he’d do anything she wanted. Every breath felt like a surrender.

“You’ll have to be the one to choose, Ev. Just tell me what you want and I’ll do it.”

[Stare]

all i want is to feel my heart beating
i'm beating it to death
i remember when running forever
was the only escape i could get

Evelyn leaned into Koi like the sea leaning into the shore.

She hadn’t noticed she was cold until his warmth eased its way into her, thawing through the rigid stiffness in her bones and loosening the tangle in her chest. A trembling breath that she hadn’t realized she’d been holding fell out all at once as she closed her eyes and nudged her head in closer. After a lifetime of chasing down adrenaline and adventure she suddenly found that she wanted nothing more than a million more moments like this, sunkissed and simple and quiet. But a part of her murmured that perhaps she was Icarus, falling in love with the sun.

“I’m so scared,” she murmured against him, and these days it hardly felt like a confession anymore. Koi had already seen the cracks in her armor and hadn’t abandoned her, so here in his arms she felt safe enough to reveal them again. Pulling back was necessary but miserable, though when she glanced up at his tousled hair and clear gaze she nearly melted all over again. Love felt both too premature and too powerful to murmur in that moment, though she was tempted to. Her sisters would call her an embarrassment.

And suddenly what they thought was beginning to matter all too much.

“When…” she paused, pressed her lips together for a moment, and then continued carefully. “When my father died, my sisters were all I had. They knew everything messed up about me but they didn’t care. And then the ocean, the ship, it all just felt right.”

She still remembered those first few moments after what felt like an eternity of being out of place. The sun fractured a thousand times on the waves, the brine of the sea clinging to her hair, gusts of wind that made her feel like a jagged stone finally being smoothed into shape. Suddenly she could breathe and be everything she’d ever wanted to be. It was freedom, and it tasted sweeter than it had in her wildest dreams.

“But when we jumped off the cliff and you dragged me out of the water…” she trailed off, tracing his collarbone with her thumb to distract herself from the sting that accompanied her line of thought. “You didn’t even really know me and you saved me. And the thing is… I’m not sure they would have.”

Maybe one of them would have finally had mercy and dragged her up just in time to escape the same fate that had claimed their father. She desperately hoped that none of her sisters would stand by and watch her die. And yet, she had no doubt that they would let her suffer. They would call it a necessary blow to her pride. They had known her all her life, and yet none of them seemed to know her as well as Koi did. None of them knew her well enough to know that drowning wasn’t a punishment, but rather a torture.

Evelyn ducked her head. “But where would I fit in here, Bird Boy? In a dress, with my hair all nice and brushed?” It was a half attempt at a joke, but also a quiet reminder of the drunken conclusion she’d reached that night in his bed.

She was no princess. Pirate might as well have been branded into her skin.

lyrics by the wealthy west, beautiful table by phresh ♡

[august vance d7b [Bella]]

“But where would I fit in here, Bird Boy? In a dress, with my hair all nice and brushed?”

He shook his head with a breath that served as a quiet laugh. It seemed like they had already decided on this one, that night when she’d climbed in his window drunk. There was some unwritten promise between the two of them. Neither would make the other into something they weren’t. Unwritten because they both knew what it felt like.

Koi remembered when he was alone, and he’d sit hunched in the darkness of this room under a table lamp, drafting blueprints of inventions for anything that could help him escape the path that had been laid for him by his parents. Wooden contraptions he could sell to make a living instead of being a doctor; simple things that made peoples’ lives easier. And his flying machines with their wind-up propellers and winged suits of wood and paper. He dreamed of flight, of lightness—of both body and soul. The weight of his future was a burden that he would spend all of his present shuffling off, to no avail. Growing up with their money he could have had anything he wanted. His parents didn’t know that what he wanted was to leave everything behind. And even Koi hadn’t known that what he wanted would change so quickly.

He’d wanted miles and miles of heights. And with Evelyn, he’d gotten depth—leagues and leagues more than he would have thought from that day they’d first met. Since then she’d let him see her for all her knots and tangles, her un-sanded edges. Not with her with her hair all nice and brushed. Koi was grateful for it, though he knew his parents would be skeptical. They wouldn’t see her the way he did.

He knew this wasn’t a place for her. But it wasn’t a place for him either, really. Now that he was certain of it, there was no way he could stay.

“I want to show you something,” he said, kissing the crown of her head.

Koi took Evelyn’s hand and led her out of the bedroom. In the hallway they passed his parents’ room, and through the open door you could see the four-poster bed with its sheer blue curtains and the cedar chest at the foot of it, covers messy from his parents’ morning rush. He kept walking, led her down thickly carpeted stairs to their first floor.

There was a foyer. A whole room whose sole purpose was to look impressive when people walked in. There were long rugs with elegant designs and a (“modest”) chandelier hanging from the high ceiling. Benches to sit on while you took your shoes off. Slippers to put on after you took your shoes off.

He led her into the kitchen. Showed her the pantry stocked with dry and canned foods. The refrigerator and its belly full of produce and fresh fish. The brand new gas stove and their table made of polished walnut wood. Tall windows with heavy beige curtains. A parlor in the connecting room with plushy couches and silver tea trays.

And then his father’s study. A wide mahogany writing desk piled with papers, and three heavy polished bookshelves that stretched to the ceiling, full of the medical textbooks his father had studied. Koi paused there, hands touching idly a drawing left on his father’s desk, detailing the correct removal of an appendix. In their drawings he could see the resemblance between himself and his dad—they had the same eye for detail, the same steady handwriting. It was something his parents had always pointed to when they mentioned how perfect it would be, Koi taking over the family practice. But that was it, really. That was their similarity.

He leaned against the desk and pulled Evelyn against his side, falling into that ease of contact he’d found with her but had managed to forget in those past few days. He raised a palm outwards, gesturing to the whole house.

“Can you believe this place? All this for three people. And they want to give it all to me.” He paused, shook his head. “When we broke into that house together, I remember thinking, at least my parents weren’t that bad. But the longer I live here the more I think it’s all the same.” He pulled her in front of him, held her shoulders with both of his hands and slid them down to her elbows.

“This is no place for me. It’s no place for you either. And we just can’t stay with Ophelia, you know that, right? Do you see that?” He looked Evelyn in the eyes, tried to judge how crazy she’d think he was if he told her what was formulating in the back of his mind. A seed had planted itself when they’d rowed that boat out to sea, brought those glass jars to their lips and drank the burning liquid. It had taken him this long to feel the roots, but now that he did, Koi suspected it had been there the whole time. Something waiting for them, at that line where the stars met the ocean.

“Ev? What if we left it all?”

[Stare]

all i want is to feel my heart beating
i'm beating it to death
i remember when running forever
was the only escape i could get

Her dreams had changed since she met him.

Evelyn used to wake up gasping, moments away from drowning in the same endless darkness that had taken her father. Lungs ablaze, limbs thrashing, screams trapped in her throat, she had never made it back to the surface. At least, not until she met Koi. Her Bird Boy had warped her dreams, rewriting the ending into one where his arms dragged her back up to fresh air, sunlight, life. But then Ophelia had gone and meddled with things and her dreams had shifted again.

As she followed him through his house, feeling uncannily like an unwelcome rat in a pristine white castle, Evelyn began to realize what a miracle it was that Koi’s dreams seemed to be changing, too. Even when she’d lived on shore their house had looked nothing like this. She was terrified to brush against anything, certain it would melt and rot beneath her unworthy touch. Suddenly she was struck by the terrifying thought that such a fate was already seizing Koi, that she’d infected him with her bad influence. What else could cause him to turn his back on a life of such peaceful certainty.

But as he drew her close to him by the desk, his eyes alight with a plan so wild that it put even some of her craziest ideas to shame, Evelyn was reminded that it wasn’t Koi’s house or his well-off family that made her unworthy of him. It was his shining heart, his intricate mind, that smile that made her knees weak. He was too good for a life of certainty. It would only cage his wings. He was destined for something far grander than peaceful or easy. Evelyn knew that she would never deserve any of it, but she was determined to devote hours, days, months, years trying.

Reaching forward and planting her hands on the desk on either side of him, Evelyn shifted scandalously close and smiled a bit crookedly up at him. “What did I tell you about putting crazy schemes into my head?”

I might actually listen to them.

She’d told him something else all those weeks ago, half drunk and too scared to kiss him. There's nothing out there, Bird Boy. But what was there for them in Four? Two lives that neither of them fit into? Evelyn was all too aware of the desperation that suddenly seized her as her eyes darted over his face, knowing that this couldn’t be the last time she saw it. Was there something out there, beyond the edges of the map?

There was no one else in the world that she’d rather find out with.

Except.

She felt her expression falter. In her most recent dreams, she wasn’t the one underwater. She wasn’t the one sinking beyond reach.

The raw tone of her voice surprised her when she spoke. “What if something happens? I can’t - ” Evelyn cut off, trying to duck her head before he saw her expression.

Because in her new nightmares it was Koi who was drowning, and she couldn’t save him.

lyrics by the wealthy west, beautiful table by phresh ♡

[august vance d7b [Bella]]

“What if something happens? I can’t—“

Evelyn lowered her eyes and Koi caught something unfamiliar in the sound of her voice that made his throat feel tight. The idea had come to him so suddenly but now that he had put it into words, it felt too real to put back. Evelyn was doubting him and he couldn’t lose her on this. It would be the two of them, or not at all.

Fingers at the nape of her neck, her ear in the crook of his thumb, he tilted her head back up. Though he knew she didn’t take orders, Koi hoped she’d allow him this one.

“Evelyn, look at me.”

His eyes searched hers, blue-grey and quivering, pleading for the sign that she’d follow him no matter how crazy this plan would sound. Behind her back his right hand clutched unconsciously at her shirt, twisting it between his fingers.

”I’m not a going to be a doctor and you’re not going to be your sister’s slave. There’s nothing here for us. No happiness, no comfort, no freedom, no dreams. We can live under the heel of Ophelia’s boot—“ he bit her name like cold metal—”or we can play pretend and you can keep sneaking in my window. Or…” Koi knew he sounded harsh and he prayed it wasn’t hurting, hoped she could feel how close he held those moments when they’d met in hiding together. “Or we find out what’s really out there. You know how to sail. I’ve got enough food here for two weeks, at least. Evelyn—“

Still his hand behind her back pulled her closer, into the sharp bones of his hips and his forehead that leaned into hers until he could feel the heat of her breath on his face. He gripped her like he’d lose her if he didn’t. Kissed her on the side of the head, lips against red hair, told her:

“I want a future with you. Somewhere. Not here. Say you’ll come with me.”

[Stare]

all i want is to feel my heart beating
i'm beating it to death
i remember when running forever
was the only escape i could get

Frigid memories of nightmares churning beneath an unforgiving sea were slowly thawed and dispersed by the fierce warmth of Koi's embrace. The tightness in Evelyn's chest unraveled slightly, escaping her in a short, wavering sigh. Her eyes fluttered shut as she marveled at how the two of them fit together like they had been molded against each other.

"Are you trying to seduce me into running away with you?" She teased breathlessly, turning her head toward him and brushing her lips playfully along his jaw. But she knew he wasn't joking. Her hands smoothed over his collarbone, his shoulders, down his arms, reassuring herself that he was safe and in one piece in front of her.

It was only luck that had brought them together on that beach, but the idea of being forced apart left a stinging, strangled void where her ribs joined together. She had known, tucked in a rowboat listening to the sound of his quiet breathing, that she was in trouble. She had known that it would be hard. But everything about him felt too right to ever call it a mistake.

Evelyn pulled back enough to look him in the eye. "I'll go with you."

Because crazy adventures were what they did, because she wanted the future he described, because she loved him. Quietly, subconsciously, in her own mind, she was able to admit it to herself. She’d been tied to him since the moment she couldn’t bring herself to leave him behind in his dad’s boss’s house.

“But you have to promise to keep this beautiful body of yours safe and intact, you hear?” She waggled her eyebrows at him, half-masking the very real fears of losing him to the angry, crashing surf. Her hands betrayed her, gripping his upper arms like touch alone could anchor him firmly with her. “And...” She trailed off, gaze shifting to the towering shelves surrounding them and the sturdy yet stunning desk behind Koi. “And I need to know that you really want this. You’re just - you’re giving up so much.” Evelyn’s words hung, in her mind, unfinished.

For me. Just me.

lyrics by the wealthy west, beautiful table by phresh ♡