one good memory | emmett

[tick 12a / calla]

E  M  M  E  T  T
L  E  R  O  U  X

☵

I watch his face go red and I watch him choke on his wine and wonder if I should be helping him.

I probably should right? Getting caught up here would be bad enough, but getting caught up here with Ky Earnest passed out on the floor because I accidentally waterboarded him with chardonnay would be worse.

But I take another sip and laugh instead, try to imagine what conversation lessons would even look like, and it feels nice to slowly sink into the floor and watch him flounder. Because how old is he, sixteen? Seventeen? The blonde hair makes him look older, I think. And I wonder when he got it down, if he's used to it yet, if he doesn't quite recognize himself when he looks in the mirror.

Because I know I don't.

I'm not sure where it comes from but I'm suddenly soft-spoken, all quiet and subdued against a swath of cotton, "Some boundaries are meant to be overstepped." I tell him, and I think I actually believe it.

"I know I'm supposed to be perfect but I'm not," he says, and I look at him a little surprised, a little unsure in the face of something like that. I've tried all my life to be perfect, I agonized over it for a long time, but I always ended up fucking it up one way or another.

He says he doesn't have any stories, and it makes something in me twist. Because this shouldn't even be that monumental to him. This is just a send-off, a stupid promise he made and had to keep, one last hurrah. This is just-

I don't really know.

I don't know what this is.

I put my arm under my head and lean back beside him, watching the ceiling shift colours. This is just his way of being nice, so he doesn't feel guilty when I leave tomorrow. But then I think about how he had held his father's ring out and how he had let me hold it like it wasn't the last and only piece of him that he had left. I think about how he didn't push me away when I hugged him even though I know I was shit at it.

There's a bird calling in the background as I tilt my body to watch the rise and fall of his chest, where the ring is balanced, and I watch the way it glints under the dying sun. It's such a small thing, insignificant to the world, but it means so much to him.

I want to mean that much to someone.

But I don't know how. And I guess I never really have.

I let my eyes drift from his chest to his throat to his face and when they stop there I feel lighter and heavier at the same time. I don't know how to be loved but I know how to pretend, and how to cover that up and play pretend. I grin into my hand and I can't tell if if it's real or if it's fake anymore. Which is strange, because I used to always be able to tell the difference.

"Nothing? Really? No insane parties? No girlfriends?" I turn my head to look at him more clearly and suddenly make a very bad decision, "No boyfriends?"

I shift and lean on my elbow, head in my hand, "I find that hard to believe."

[gamemaker kelsier]

k y .

"It's a full moon at midnight
Running fast out of time
It's a feeling you can't describe
Floating past the pale skylight."

I get by on the idea that if I were to disappear, the only one that it would hurt would be Opal. Maybe Sardonyx and Sampson and my aunt might be sad as well but in the end, they'd be alright. I think the only person that it would really destroy would be my mom. It's a sad sounding fact, like a scrap piece of knowledge that no one really wants to look at. It doesn't make me feel bad though, just kind of good.

I'd never want to hurt anyone the way my dad did to my mom.

I like feeling like a wallflower and maybe that's why I have no stories, why my days are the same steady routine of training and gardening, beginning with a run. In the end I know that half the district loves me and wants to be me, the other half thinks they could take me and wants to kill me. It's an odd way to live.

But I detach myself so easily, all it takes is a little nudge to unclip my hands and let them pull up roots while I go somewhere else. I know it's not supposed to be like that, I'm not supposed to leave my body until it's night and I'm dreaming but I do. I like to exist outside of myself maybe because I know I'll never really exist otherwise.

"You say that," I say quietly, "They all do until I overstep them."

I've said the wrong thing before so many times and watched the way that the wall comes crashing down between myself and another. I'm bad at that, the part of existing where I have to interact with anyone but my mom so I usually just don't. It's served me alright, it's whatever right?

My fingers pluck at the cotton duvet under my hand and I feel a change beside me when Emmett lays down beside me. Our arms are so close together that it makes the hairs on mine move and my arm tingles and itches oddly. It must be some weird carnal response to warn me of danger but I ignore it. I let the back of my hand touch his and then drawback, as if by accident, but I did it on purpose. I like the way that his skin feels against mine.

I turn my head to look at him then and feel his eyes on me, travelling over my skin and I know that it's a different type of looking than normal. Maybe that should haunt me, should push me back up, away from him, but I can't move my body; I don't want to move my body away from his. What if that's just all what attraction is? Polar opposites drawn to each other like magnets.

Because I know that in this story, I'm a prince gazing at a pauper and even if we're both careers it doesn't matter. We're from two very different worlds but I don't mind that. I think I knew I didn't mind that from that first moment on the train.

"No," I say quietly, "None of those things, I don't think I was ever interested befor-" I gaze up at him as he props himself up on his elbow and I lose my train of thought. Maybe it's the wine already going to my head. I catch the sun behind his head, lighting him up with a golden halo and I follow it down to his neck, then shoulder.

"Before now," I say quietly.

And I stare at him, knowing full well that its' my turn to keep the conversation going but I don't have anything for him. I want to thank him for this, for giving me his last night of freedom but it feels weird. I don't know how to say it without ruining it, whatever this is, this one small moment.

Where I don't want to be a wallflower.

[tick 12a / calla]

E  M  M  E  T  T
L  E  R  O  U  X

☵

"Before now." I echo him.

I don’t know if he means now in general or now as in right now, here with me.

I hope it's the first one, it has to be the first one. Because if it isn't - the thought sends a splinter of ice down my spine and the floaty feeling starts to leave.

If it isn't - I'm just going to hurt him like how I hurt everyone else. Like how I hurt myself.

I came here with a singular focus - I wanted to win, I wanted to be worthy of something. But I feel a sea breeze float in over the heat he gives off and I can practically see my focus shift, like I'm five feet away looking at myself. I want to shake my own shoulders, scream in my own face and tell myself to wake the fyck up. This is dangerous, whatever we're doing, laying too close and talking too quietly. I shouldn't be doing this to him. I know I shouldn't be doing this to him.

Because if I do get out of that arena, I can't guarantee who I'll be on the other side.

I go to take another sip but my cup's already empty.

I look at it, and then at his, and try to ignore how quickly I'm sobered by it.

"Don't tell me that was your first drink." I mean to joke, but it gets filtered through the heavy air and comes out all serious. I feel a little like I stole something from him. Because he still has so much of his life to live, away from the games and the drama and the heartbreak here. He should be running wild in the Capitol and hitting up every club on the street in preparation for the countdown tomorrow, not here with me, wasting one of his first times.

I don't know why I still think like that. After almost two decades of never feeling good enough, I guess the mindset just stuck. Sometimes I can't even pretend that I belong in One, with all the weapons and all the posturing, so I just built this great big thing up in front of me to use as a shield, and when it crumbled, I used it as a crutch.

I reach between us and take his cup, feel my thumb brush against his finger for a heartbeat. It's awkward holding both glasses, one in each hand, and I try to keep myself propped up enough to look down at him and the way the yellow light of the sky cuts across his face. It catches on his ring again and I think of his parents and fate and every cruel thing I've ever done.

This is to protect you, I don't say, this is to protect me.

Except something else comes out and I think I'm lecturing him but it feels more like a defence mechanism than anything. I think I'm deflecting too, shutting down and realizing where we're going, but it's a little like a car-crash and I can't bring myself to hit the brakes because I'm too busy trying to memorize every line of his face.

"Stuff like that, firsts, you should save them for something special." I tell him, "Someone special."

[gamemaker kelsier]

k y .

"It's a full moon at midnight
Running fast out of time
It's a feeling you can't describe
Floating past the pale skylight."

He starts to retreat without moving a single muscle and for the first time I realize how lonely it feels to watch someone go away like that. It's not like he's moved, I can't just reach out and grab him but I want to. I just want to reign him in, pull him back into this gentle moment before it's too late.

I'm second to realize that my cup is empty, second to understand that I've passed a marker on my route to adulthood. "So what if it was," I ask him. I don't see the significance. Maybe I should, we live in a society that celebrates each milestone with so much ceremony but I've never really understood that. "I drank water once for the first time too," I joke.

He takes my cup and there's his skin against mine again, too gentle for a career. I let my hand follow his, forgetting that I'm supposed to pull away. I do after a moment, and curl my fingers into a fist against my chest. I always thought I was so good at hiding every little feeling but I never knew that a body could be electric. I wasn't prepared for this.

Emmett says I need to save my first for someone special and I feel the way it makes my heart crawl up into my throat, aiming for the ceiling before I really understand what he means. Does he think he's not special?

His response kind of unnerves me. I gaze at him, trying to discern where he got this concept. I wonder how easy it was for him to fall in between the cracks growing up, how often he must have had to figure things out on his own. I think about those long winter days spent staring out the living room window, alone and wonder about his. I always forget how alone you can feel even with someone right beside you. When no one is seeing you it feels like you're drying out slowly, the sun burning your branches to a slow crisp.

I look so hard that I have to prop myself up on my elbows to get a closer look. There are those eyes again, a faded gentle green in the fading digital sunset and for a moment I almost forget what I'm trying to do, they're so easy to get lost in.

I know I'll be thinking of them for a long time after this.

My brow narrows as I look closer and it's just a slight thing, almost too easy to miss. a little man sits inside his head too, fingers on the controls and I see the way the light above the exit door blares on and off, see the way he prepares to draw back because someone is looking at him. Someone is seeing him.

And I see the way that he looks at me, see the way that his glance lingers a little too long and I know that I'm not crazy, that this is a first. So I do it, I reach up slowly and I take a cup from his hand and put it aside. My hand finds his free one and I push my fingers back into his, kind of clumsy but we make it back to intertwined just like that.

This time it's easy, there's no awkward moment of trying to figure out how our hands fit like before, it's just how it is, callus against callus and I press my fingers down carefully over his knuckles, anchoring him. "You're special, Emmett," I tell him, tone serious.

I've never really felt like I fit anywhere before until now, here on floor thirteen with a boy I barely know who is always going to be just out of reach. All we have is an 'if'. 'If' he comes back, 'if' he lives, 'if' he's even the same boy on the other side of all of it but I don't think I care about any of that. I'll adapt.

"To me, you're something special," I say, voice somehow soft and strong all at once as if I'm melting with the sun, "I see you."

"I see you ok?" I whisper.

And I've never been so certain of anything. My back hits the blanket again as my other hand reaches up to cup the back of his neck. It stays there a moment, hesitant, questioning and then I pull him down to kiss me.

[tick 12a / calla]

E  M  M  E  T  T
L  E  R  O  U  X

☵

I had laughed earlier, when I thought this would mean much less to the both of us.

( TIME CRUNCH EMO WIP FILLER AREA )

I look at him and he knows. He knows what it’s like to not be seen. He sees me.

You’re special, he says, and every barrier I've put between us in the past week turns jagged and breaks off in my chest. 

I turn the words over and over again in my mind, tumbling them, rearranging them, and get the same result each time. I wonder what that says about me - the fact that this boy is telling me that he thinks I'm special and I have to work to convince myself that he actually means it.

Ky takes his cup, and then my hand, and then all of the air from my lungs. I try to convince myself that I don’t know what’s about to happen before it does. I tell myself to dig my heels in but I let myself be pulled instead and it’s almost easy, the way we fit together.

He tastes a little like the wine and a little like something else.

It’s short, barely even anything, and it might be because I pull back, or because he lets go, and I have to count the number of seconds it takes for my head to catch up to my heart and my heart to catch up to my body.

It’s the same as the number of eyelashes he has.

My hand grips his like a lifeline, like I’m drowning, the other falls somewhere on the ground between his shoulder and head. I know I had let go of my cup at some point but I never heard it drop. It’s like there’s a whole gap in my memory now where everything went bright for a beat and I couldn’t do anything but close my eyes.

I can still feel his mouth on mine but the greedy little thing clawing out of my chest tosses and turns because I want to remember it, I want to keep the moment close and make it one of the last things I think about.

We’re in between one place and the next when I’m pushing myself into his space again, less chaste and more desperate, a real kiss this time and even though I’m the one that pushed forward first it still makes my head spin. The reds and purples of the sky turn his hair a warmer colour and my hand runs through it, down to the side of face until my fingers curl against his jaw.

“First time kissing.” I breathe out, “First time kissed.”

That means I’ve taken three things from him now

"You're two for two."

My mouth is running on auto-pilot again while the rest of me tries to keep up and it's stupid, so stupid, I don’t know why I’m out of breath, but I am.

I’ve waited so long to be seen that it’s almost cutthroat for it to be happening now, like this. Maybe I’m afraid. Not of dying exactly, just of dying as someone unwanted. If at least one person remembered me the way I want to be remembered, the way I am, then I think that would be okay. If that someone was him, then I know it would be.

If I come back, I want to ask him, when I come back, will you still be here?

My nose brushes against his nose, and when I close my eyes I can still see the ocean.

I think it’s a good thing.

“Don’t forget about me.” I say, and if my mother was here I think she’d accuse me of begging. Maybe that's weak of me, selfish of me even, to ask, but the thought of being lost and forgotten and a nobody, the idea of being just a number on a spreadsheet or a tally mark on a chalkboard makes my blood run cold. “Promise.”

And maybe I'm talking about my family, maybe I'm just talking about everyone, "Don't let them forget me."

[gamemaker kelsier]

k y .

"It's a full moon at midnight
Running fast out of time
It's a feeling you can't describe
Floating past the pale skylight."

Half of me wasn't expecting him to kiss me back. Half of me was still so uncertain, afraid maybe. No matter what Emmett says, I know I've always been more disappointing in person. I feel like I'm still learning how to read a room and this one is so big, so damn empty, I barely know how to hold myself upright.

Our lips press together gently the first time, it's a small sweet thing and I realize that the wine tastes better on Emmett's lips than it ever did in the cup. The tips of my fingers find where his hair falls on the back of his neck and I push my hand further up, his hair is so soft. I pinch a strand briefly before sliding my hand back down slowly, happy just to explore him.

There's a question on my face, I know there is when he pulls away. For a moment, he's unreadable. The sunset has hit its peak and it paints his cheekbone and nose an intense pink colour and I notice a little smattering of freckles near his lips.

I take a picture in my head.

Then his lips are against mine again except this time it's different, this time he's in charge and I let him teach me how to kiss. For a moment, we're on the ceiling and absolutely nothing else exists. My hand shifts in his, fingers unlocking slowly and my thumb travels down to press into the palm of his hand. I hold him by the wrist, a tether.

I'd keep him here if I could, right here, inside of this moment.

And I feel his hand in my hair, on the side of my face, against my jaw next and where he touches me, my skin burns. He doesn't move away to speak and I push my forehead up against his slowly, shutting my eyes against the heat of his breath. I just want to stay near him and it's an odd, desperate feeling. My own breath comes too quick and I realize that I forgot to breathe for a solid minute. I couldn't.

"Pretty good firsts," I murmur.

For a long moment, we just exist like that. My thumb slides against his palm slowly back and forth and I brush my lips lightly against his. The sound of the tide has calmed down and for a moment we both breath with it, large shuddering things that swell and break against sand and I know that there'll never be a time where I hear that sound and don't think about Emmett.

When I open my eyes again, his are shut and I pull him down against me, my hand on the back of his neck settling him against my chest so that I can feel the vibration when he speaks. I've never been this close with anyone in my life and if I could, I'd be in the same spot as him, stuck in the exact same breath.

Promise me you'll survive, I want to say it to him so badly, Promise me you'll come back.

But even if he does, he won't be the same.

"Don't forget about me."

My hand leaves his neck to run gently down his back and up again.

"Promise."

"I promise," I whisper, "I promise but-."

And I break momentarily, my words get stuck in my throat. They're all jumbled up and I don't know how to untangle them. "Just promise this won't be our last sunset."

I don't want to just watch the world paint him in hues of purples and pinks but in reds, golden oranges. I want grey sunsets and underwhelming ones and the sand beneath our feet, real sand. Then I pull him closer until we're so tangled up that I don't know where he ends and I begin anymore.

"As long as I live, I won't let anyone forget about you, they'll wish I'd shut up but I won't."

And just like that, I've finally learned how easy it is ache.

[tick 12a / calla]

E  M  M  E  T  T
L  E  R  O  U  X

☵

I fall endlessly into him. Onto him. There's an anchor tied to my ankle and I let it drag me all the way down to where he is, floating somewhere just above consciousness and below common sense.

His dad's ring falls into my sight again and I can't quite describe it, but it looks heavier now, sinking into the expanse of his chest and I know what I'm doing but I can't bring myself to stop. I wonder if Potato would hate me for what I'm doing to his son, or if he would understand because he was young and stupid once too. I put my arm around Ky's shoulders, over his collarbone, so the sleeve of my shirt covers the metal band up and I don't have to look at it.

There's this tripwire between us that I haven't stepped over yet, a delicate little thing that I won't be able to backtrack from. I push my forehead against his temple and try to force myself to stay in this place, to follow the tide of his breathing. My lungs fill will saltwater and we nudge back and forth a few times, neither willing to fully settle.

There's that feeling again - a thunderstorm echoing in the way my lips brush against his skin and I close my eyes to try to stop myself from feeling so weak.

I'm glad the view of the arena doesn't work two ways. Because I don't think I want him to see me with blood on my hands and my life lying out on the ground. I don't want him to see me break and then watch as I try to put myself back together.

But maybe it's selfish, maybe I'm selfish. I would rather let him watch than have to watch him back. I don't want to see the look on his face when decides that this was a mistake. I don't want to be his first heartbreak. And I don't want him to be mine.

I think about how he came to my room and I had almost tried to make an excuse to not come up here. The waves crash louder here than they did back there, and it feels a little like they're about to sweep me away so I hold onto him tighter. Too early to say yes but too late to say no, I had decided, and the words seem to fit here too but for some reason they hurt me more than the idea of lying to him does.

I think about how every sunset in the arena will take me back to this place, it doesn't matter if I only get one more, or if I get three or five more or if I get none at all. They could take every limb from my body and I would still look at the sky and say not this, you can't take this.

"I promise," I say, and I press the words into his cheekbone, I lie to him and feel the ghost of his parents' time in this same building bear down on us.

I'd always felt like the little weeds that grow at the bases of buildings. The ones that little kids pick to give to their parents but then as soon as they grow up they open their eyes and see the green for what it is, cut them back and spray them down. It's like how I grew up around gold but I'd always felt silver. Or how my family's blood was blue but when I had cut myself open to look, I was red.

I've never fit in anywhere quite like the way I fit in his arms.

And that makes it worse. All of this. Every piece of me he touches feels cleansed. I've spent my whole life trying and failing and then trying again. Nothing has ever seemed to stick, except this, right here, right now.. Because he's taken a part of me, one of the best and ugliest parts of me, and it's something I'll die without, even if I survive the games.

Maybe if I try hard enough I can imagine him talking about me, maybe years from now, maybe tomorrow, with someone he doesn't even know, about a boy he met once and how he told him he was special.

I know there are worse things than what he's offering up I wish I wasn't like this. I wish I could just give him this moment instead of giving him an out, so that I don't ruin his life no matter how much I want to. I know one day he'll be okay. And deep down I know that one day he won't need this anymore, this memory here. Not the way I need it.

"Don't tell them about this," I say, suddenly scared of something I can't put a name to, because this is just for us, and because I know there are Capitolites and careers that will use it against him, and I would protect him from that if I could, "Tell them everything but this."

Keep that part of me, I almost tell him, that little weak thing that you pulled from me. Keep it and hide it and make them think I was strong.

[gamemaker kelsier]

k y .

"It's a full moon at midnight
Running fast out of time
It's a feeling you can't describe
Floating past the pale skylight."

Maybe people do it for the warmth, the way it's harder to breathe because there's a weight on you. And it's not the same kind of pressure like when even the air feels too heavy to breathe. It isn't like burning at all, it's just this warm, heavy feeling of being trapped out of choice.

I could lay here like this beneath Emmett Le Roux. I could, until the moment we crumble into dust.

I know it's not love, that it can't be. Life isn't a fairytale, people don't just meet and know they're destined, love is work. It's a choice that you make every day and I've known Emmett for maybe one combined. I think it's ok to love him here in this moment that's just ours. It's okay to fall a little bit in love with the way he presses his mouth against my cheek.

It's okay to adore the way he breathes in tandem with me, the way he rests his forehead on mine and his thumb finds my cheek. I don't just feel like he sees me, he holds me, knows me better than anyone ever has before. It's another first, the way that my heart beats against my ribcage, I've never felt like this. I don't tell him, I don't admit it.

That maybe I'm a little head-over-heels.

In the end I don't want to hurt him because I know that if I say it, if I tell him about this feeling, he'll never forgive himself for it. His eyes have touched my father's ring more than once and I don't have to read his mind to know what he's thinking, what everyone thinks when they look at me.

A pity, just another pity.

His promise falls between us and it makes me smile. I'm not a fool, I know that no matter how hard I will for it to happen, Emmett may not come back. The thought is empty though, sterile. It sucks the air out of me in tandem with the sound of the receding tide and I let the current take it. It'll come back later, I know that.

"Shh," I tell him and I cup his cheek before kissing his lower lip softly. The skin there is distressed and I think I've maybe seen him chew his lip once or twice. "As if I'd let anyone else have this moment," I say. I stare into those eyes of his, closer now than they've ever been and I tell him I love him with mine, bottomless and brown.

Because I do I think, for all of my promises that I don't, that I haven't fallen into the same trap as my mother. You'd think an Earnest would learn but I guess not.

"This is my best memory," I say, "Here with you."

I'll never say a word, I wouldn't know how to describe it anyway.

The last bit of sun goes down over the ocean and we're in the dark. There's still the sound of the water but it's slowed down with the sun and the fake breeze has warmed up. Stars begin to light up above our heads and if I wasn't so preoccupied with the boy on top of me maybe I'd marvel a little bit at the tech.

But it's not half as beautiful.

I'm silent for a long moment, languid beneath him. A small part of me wonders what hour we're at in the countdown, how many more seconds do I have to hold him before he has to leave?

I run my hand through his hair carefully, body learning him before I lose him.

My eyes shut somewhere between moments ago and now and it's a slow realization that I've truly got no wish to move. I could let my fingers dance over his features all night.

I love you, my hands tell his skin as they cup his cheeks gently.

"They can't have it."

They can't have you.