Work Text:
"Where the Water is Still"
- one -
She traces her fingers over the tangle of routes again. Tries to make sense of the color-coding and minuscule text that’s making her mind spin, and remember all the directions that her roommate gave her.
Well, sort of. “You’ll find your way, don’t worry!” he hollered, before waving and running out the door for what probably was his fifth audition that week.
Except after standing in front of this subway map for the 10 minutes, she is no closer to finding her destination than she was before. The lady staring dumbly at her phone and sitting at the help desk is starting to give her weird looks, and the business people who know exactly where they’re going jostle her as they breeze past in slacks and polished shoes. One almost knocks her over, and she stumbles to regain her balance.
Exhaling, she kneads the back of her cramping neck. She pulls out her phone and looks over the text that her brother sent her, the only line of text on the white screen. Mom’s worse than usual. You haven’t called, have you?
She gave up on being the perfect daughter two weeks ago, when she boarded a plane that took her 3000 miles away. But it’s the unbearable bitterness she imagines on her mother’s face that prevents her from calling home. Still, she is not strong enough to face anything head on.
And so she stalls and stands in the center of a blur of people who have places to go, while trying to convince herself that she does, too.
When she eventually finds the correct path and train, she hears the conductor announce its departure. The doors slam close as she bursts in, out of breath.
The compartment is crowded, and she’s forced to stand in the center, between the two exit doors. Carefully, so as to avoid eye contact, she scans over the various passengers packed into the space. All wear the same dreary expression, as if the subway is taking them all somewhere grim and they’ve been resigned to their fate. They remind her of the people from her own town.
She clenches the metal pole tighter. She won’t end up like that. She’s going to a great school, she knows what she wants to become, and she has the heart to make something of herself in this new city. Her dreams will keep her invigorated.
All she needs to do is make sure that she keeps moving forward.
- two -
It’s the night of the Cordonian ball, and she’s standing in the corner. Again.
Ideally, she would be hovering by the dinner table, waiting for the various noble people to invite her into frilly conversations about politics and government. Better yet, she’d glow in the center of the ballroom, swaying to the music and waltzing with the well-dressed men who smile pleasantly at her.
But tonight, her feet feels like lead. The glare of diamond-encrusted spotlights, the frantic gaze of bow-tie clad servers, the high-pitched trills of ladies’ laughter, all make her shrink. The ballroom is too bright, too loud, and it stretches miles into the distance.
So she stays back, busying herself with a half-finished flute of champagne and sneaking glances at the man in the denim shirt across the room.
She focuses on the lines of his back. Broad. Tight. A little tense. Her gaze slips down, down the curve of his bicep, along the wrinkle of his jean shirt that exposes his forearms, to his strong hands rubbing slowly against each other.
Pink blots her cheeks, and she swallows. How many hours a day does she spend with her eyes fixed on him? Over the past few weeks, she’s become attuned to his presence, pulled to him as he walks into any room with his sturdy gait and watchful eyes.
For all his aversion to the royal life, Drake is firmly rooted in Cordonia. He is devoted to protecting the prince, and despite his constant warnings of traitors and ingenuine nobles, he has no shortage of friends. The group of guys he’s standing with on the other side of the room is a testament to that.
More than anything, she envies the ease with which he can slip into a trained scowl and stare even the most uptight nobles down until they skitter away. He knows exactly what he wants to do, and who he is. So long as he has himself and a bottle of cheap whiskey, he can make a home out of anywhere.
Maybe that’s why she likes him so much: he is everything she wishes she could be. Truth is, she’s never been brave from birth. No, she molded her body into hard edges of courage and gusto, after years of shaking behind closed walls. This assurance is still foreign to her.
She can hear him laughing from across the room, and she cranes her neck ever so slightly, hoping to catch a glimpse and send her heart into dangerous overdrive again. But he’s hidden behind the mass of chuckling people. Running a hand through his tousled hair, he punches a neighbor playfully in the shoulder, before bursting out into laugher with the group again.
Who’s making him laugh? Most certainly, she could walk over and casually slide into their conversation. She’d revel in his chocolate gaze, one that she’s recently noticed tends to linger on her lips for a split second too long, and that lopsided smirk she swears he reserves just for her. Maybe he’ll brush his hand against hers, burn patterns into her wrist, when he thinks no one is looking.
But the strands of hair from her braided bun (that took Hana hours to complete) are slipping down into her face, and the lace dress that Maxwell reassured her she looked marvelous in feels far too heavy. The room grows brighter, louder, and she feels her head spinning.
Tonight, wishful thinking isn’t enough to pull her out of the deep end. In a room filled with perfect women and reeking of deceit, she is wilting. Here, she’s never been more acutely aware of the moments she’s wasted.
The one she’s wasting now.
Downing her glass of champagne (she cringes at the bitter aftertaste), she heads for the doors.
She can already see Bertrand throwing up his hands and scolding her for not “mingling,” making a good impression on the nobility at the party. But it’s the thought of Maxwell—shaking his head, with just that small glimmer of disappointment in his face, before forcing an encouraging smile—that spurs her guilt. Always, it is her promise to him that propels her back into the world of false smiles and pleasantries. For a moment, she can almost pretend that she belongs here.
Not tonight. Amid the ripple of laughter and dancing in the ballroom, and the strange ache in her chest that’s been unraveling since she first stepped off the plane, she slips out the door and into the frosty air of the night.
Exhaling, she rakes her fingers through the bun (she silently apologizes to Hana) and lets the cold breeze stream through. She leans against the railing of the balcony and finally, finally closes her eyes.
You can breathe now. You can breathe now. You can breathe now.
But the disdain of a neighboring attendee’s snort at your fumbled greeting and the radiant, incomparable beauty of the foreign ladies who flock to the prince are embroidered into her drooping, secondhand dress and burn red with shame. The noise does not die down.
(As well as the hope. She hates herself for hoping that somehow—despite how unsteady she feels—he is moments away from sauntering up and whispering a hello to her ear.)
Slipping down, she presses her forehead to the icy surface of the railing. These days, the uproar has reached a fever pitch. Sometimes, she swears that there are waves crashing inside, beating against the walls. Begging for release.
The storm will quiet eventually. Even as she’s heaving with body hunched over, shivering in the cold, she knows that it’s yet another moment that will pass.
But for now, it rages on. And so she turns to what she is best at. She stays still. Breathes. Tries to move as little as possible, save for the steady pulse of a slowing heartbeat and jagged inhale and exhale. Hold onto the stagnancy. Movement is everywhere—in the ballroom, in her brain, in his eyes (soft one moment, hardened the next), in the shifting gazes that scorn her everywhere she turns. For once, she wants it all to be motionless.
Stay still enough, and you can stop everything from disintegrating. This she knows is true.
- three -
“Why don’t you stay?”
Bitter words fly out off of her mother’s tongue as she scurries around the room, tossing clothes into her already bulging suitcase. She can feel a prickle of annoyance (as she always does when she and her mother clash) but it’s quickly forgotten when she remembers the promise of a new life.
Still, as she pulls out of her driveway, she sees her in the kitchen window. Her mother’s figure is dark, barely illuminated by the tiny lamp they keep in the corner, but she sees all weathered skin and sacrifices and worry.
She is stubborn. If she leaves, she cannot return. Even if it means that her mother’s only child ran away without looking back.
As she’s driving by yellowing fields, barbed fences, the neighbors she grew up with, walking down the street with exhaustion written all over their faces, she’s struck by the harrowing decay that fills the air here. A place where dreams turn to dust, and courage to complacency. For too long, she’s wanted so desperately to escape falling into their same fate.
So where is the euphoria? The freedom?
She steps on the gas pedal, and whizzes past it all. Don’t think about the dead ends they all warned her of, her mother’s unanswered texts to her older brother. Think of herself.
Leap off the cliff and set everything into motion. Risk ruining the illusion of safety and facing irreparable heartbreak, yes. But better a life spent in passion, rather than slow decay.
The more she says this to herself, the more likely she’ll believe it.
After she parks at the airport, she pulls out a pristine sheet of paper, creased only once down the center. Her gaze darts across the page, drinking in the words as if it’s the first time she’s seeing it again. Slowly, her eyes sparkle, then a grin filled with hope.
The light in her face sets everything aglow. Street musicians, twinkling billboards, and towering skyscrapers: she can envision it all already. Her own story. All she needs is to take that dive.
We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted to our 4-year study program, here in New York City…
- four -
The light suddenly goes out, and she looks up to see him in front of her. “The sun is driving me crazy.”
“Sun safety is no joke.” The dry retort is out her mouth before she can even register it. Drake raises an eyebrow, the corners of his mouth quirking up.
Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Maxwell and Hana tossing a volleyball back and forth, and farther along the beach, the prince, staring into the aquamarine waters. But right now, her focus is on the man in front of her. The one that is shirtless and dripping with water, and whose dark brown gaze trained on her makes her skin feel like its on fire.
“You’re something else, aren’t you?” he muses aloud, and she forces her gaze up, away from his chiseled stomach. Oops. She sputters, and he laughs, plopping next to her with a heavy sigh and a poorly disguised smirk.
As if he thinks she didn’t catch him ogling her when they were in the water earlier. She scowls, and he laughs again, before pulling on his white T-shirt (She pretends the rush she feels is relief, not disappointment.)
They fall into a silence, though she can’t tell whether it’s comfortable or not—honestly, she can never tell with Drake. For now, his deep gaze is steady on the horizon, expression calm but unreadable. Maybe that’s why she feels so warm.
Or maybe it’s her own rapidly beating heart, the small thrill in her stomach when he scoots an inch closer to her. She can’t read him, but she does know she doesn’t want this moment to end
Her knee is close to her, so close that she can feel his heat. She bites her lip. Should she?…She almost smacks herself in the head. What is she, a bumbling schoolgirl with an unreciprocated crush?
Definitely not unreciprocated. He’s clearly attracted to her, if his cocky grin when he caught her admiring him is any indication.
Drake always comes to her first. He challenges her to skiing competitions, invites her for late night drinks, walks up to her lonely bench on the beach (while shirtless and wet, too). She knows that he doesn’t deal out attention freely, and that there’s something that draws him inexplicably to her, the same way she can’t pull her gaze from him.
In this light, she notices how defined his jaw is—rough, dark with stubble and sand–and balls up her fists, hoping to dissolve her prickling desire to reach out and brush it off for him.
No. She unclenches her fists. Remember, she wants to make that first move.
And this where she seems to be having the problem. Under the blistering rays of the sunlight, she’s trapped. It’s as if she’s suspended in this moment of indecision, lost in the space between his body and hers.
Nearby, Maxwell and Hana dart into the washer, shrieking with laughter and splashing each other. How easy would it be for her to excuse herself and join the two, escape this unbearable, smoldering tension?
But she’s not that girl anymore. And just as she can’t stay in one place, she can’t keep running away either. Steeling herself, she slowly inches to the right…
“Come on. What do you say we have some real fun in the water now?” He jumps to his feet, holds a hand out to her, and her momentum leaves with a whoosh.
“Oh!” He stares down at her with an enticing grin, and she can see the sunlight swimming in his dark brown eyes. She was just about to finally… “Um.”
When she hesitates for too long and disappointment rises to his face, something inside her like frustration, annoyance, exhaustion surges to the surface and boils over.
What is she doing? For once, she wants to be the one to initiate something, uninterrupted. Moments like these are far too fleeting, and her courage is a ticking timer. She doesn’t want Drake to save her; she wants to break free on her own.
Before she can talk herself out of it again, her hands fist in his shirt and haul him far, far left.
They stumble together into the small beach restroom. It’s cramped and dark, but she can make out how wide his eyes are with surprise. He’s probably just as shocked as she feels right now.
But his gaze darts down to her mouth—she knows, because his breath hitches and mingles with hers, and he moves a hair closer. And it’s enough to propel her forward and into him.
His lips are softer than she expected; she thought they’d be rough, like the hardness that she associates with his demeanor and appearance. Right now, they’re frozen with surprise; she’s betting that he didn’t expect this boldness from her, and she glows with pride.
But as quickly as they left, the doubts resurface. Did she go too far? What if…he doesn’t truly feel the same?
She’s submerged in ice water, she’s 18 again, and it’s too much. Pulling back, she starts babbling, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—“
Then he slams his mouth into hers, and all she can think is Oh.
His hands clasp her hips and he swivels them around, so that her back is flush against the door. She can him fumble with the lock and then a click. With a sharp inhale, he presses himself back into her.
Kissing Drake is something else. His hands mold themselves to her frame, and he tugs her tighter to him with every passing second, to the point where she’s not sure where his body ends and hers begins. He kisses her harder, harder, with almost stinging pressure.
He tastes like whiskey. Dragging a hand across his back and reveling in its tautness, she whimpers. When she runs her hands through his damp hair (notes how it’s soft, too), his grip around her tightens. She feels his low groan from the back of her throat all the way down to her tingling toes.
Finally, she pulls away and and they both gasp for air. All she can hear is the sound of their chests heaving in unison.
Drake doesn’t remove his hands from her hips. Carefully, she reaches a hand up and brushes his mussed locks out of his face. He presses his forehead against her palm, sighing into her touch. Through the cracks light through the wooden door, she can make out the mix of desire and doubt in his eyes.
She needs him to know that she’s not fragile, that yes, she doesn’t want their first to be their last. So she kisses him again, gently. “I wanted this.” He nods, nuzzling his face into the crook of her neck. Her arms slip around him.
They hold each other like that until he weaves her fingers into his and leads them back into the light. “Come on, I have something to show you,” he murmurs.
- five -
It’s 2 AM. Laying in bed, she tastes nothing but bitterness.
Being a waitress was supposed to be a temporary job. “It’s just for the moment,” she reassured her mother over the phone. “Something to help me pay the bills.” She wanted to help, but it was refused. This was the whole point of her moving out–to depend on herself alone and find her own way. Besides, hadn’t she caused enough damage for her poor mother already?
Moments unfolded into weeks, which turned to months. The agents never called back, and the sporadic acting stints ended as soon as they began. Over time, she stopped trying, stopped making excuses.
This had been her pattern for the past two years: crawling out of bed at 8 am, catering to rowdy drinkers at the bar, and then dragging herself home at night. It was still barely enough to afford her tiny apartment and take care of herself.
Next door, the neighbors start rapping on the wall again, yelling about whatever it was they hated about each other for the week. She can barely hear them above the ringing in her ears, and the invisible weight pressing down into her lungs and pinning her to the mattress.
At work, she stayed positive, joking with Daniel during their breaks how she was set for Broadway next year. Behind closed walls, she’d stagger and remember leaps of faith.Wondered why her heart was still palpitating, even though she’d stayed in one place for the past two years. Why it felt like she was still in the middle of falling.
She knows now that all this time, she has been clinging to the edge of a cliff. That as safe and same as her life feels now, she is withering away. It isn’t a matter of if, but of when. How much longer can she bear to stay?
When a group of guys visit the bar the following night and she meets a prince of some sorts (Although, she must admit she’s never been one for fairy tales. Between their bits of conversation, she finds her gaze slipping over to the stocky brunette man with a denim shirt and a brooding stare), she shakes it off as another strange night, nothing more than an amusing anecdote to recount in the future.
Until the next morning, when Maxwell hands her a plane ticket with a cheeky grin, and she realizes that it’s the opportunity to start over again.
She takes it. Sends a quick text to her mom and brother, grabs her suitcase, and starts for the familiar unknown.
Maybe she’s doing the same thing she’s always done, running away from a past that’s dried up and towards another that is enticing but all too similar. But wherever this new road takes her, whether astray or to decay, she knows that it’s time for her to go.
Whatever horizon lies beyond this choice, she wills herself to move forward.
- six -
They hold hands during the entire trek to whatever destination Drake has in mind. Even when she slips in the hot sand, her hand tightly clasped in his large one keeps her upright. It reminds her of their late night rendezvous, gazing up at a starlit night sky or shifting closer to each other in a dimly lit wine cellar. That same fluttering, thrilling feeling of wonder, and of being held.
“Well, here we are.” They’ve stopped in front of the entrance to a cave, carved into the side of a rocky beachside cliff.
As they step in, the air grows cold. It’s damp and dark, save for a few spots of light, and she squints to maneuver the grooves of the terrain below.
The wind whistles through her hair. She can hear the waves outside, the sounds of their crashing reverberating off of the small walls. The white noise is so loud that she can’t even comprehend Drake’s words, until she sees him gesture at her to come over.
“Look, there.” He points to a crack in the wall, and it’s as if they’re suspended again. She expects wave pools with soft rippling water, tranquil and majestic.
What she finds is chaos. Below, the ocean tide rears up against a strip of rocky wall. Water sloshes about the rocks, froth teeming around the sand. Waves slam into each other, in a deafening roar that increases in pitch before everything falls silent, for just an instant, before the rhythm starts up again.
She wants to imprint this sliver of sea, one picture of waves crashing mercilessly into a rock wall head first, permanently into her mind.
Whatever Drake sees in her face makes him break out in a huge grin, utterly unlike his usual retrained, knowing smirks. It’s filled with unbridled joy, and it makes her heart skip a beat. “It’s good, isn’t it?”
She sees the breeze whipping through his dark hair, the sunlight in his eyes. His gaze is soft, even softer than before. “Yes.”
Something giddy bubbles to the surface, something free, and she slips into his embrace. His arms wrap around her. Standing with her back to his chest and his chin resting on top of her head, they gaze down together.
Again and again, the ocean swells and crashes. Deep down, she knows that this moment is not enough. That her tomorrow holds no promise of clear skies and blissful touches.
Still, she breathes him in and shuts her eyes. Remembers what it feels like to be in Drake’s arms, to be home.
It is enough for now.