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There is something satisfying about cutting strawberries, actually.
You might need some experience to get it. Or maybe a partner in the kitchen to keep you occupied from the tedious efforts of prepping mass amounts of food—washing and soaking vegetables, slicing stems and leaves clean off the ends of berries and fruits—because at the end of the day, it’s work. It’s always been work. Sunwoo quite literally gets paid to stand around and clean, cut, and cook these sorts of things from sunrise to sunset, until her cheeks are flushed from slaving over hot stoves and the stench of barbeque is stained into every shirt in her wardrobe.
But there is something very satisfying about cutting strawberries.
Maybe it’s the slick of the blade; the swift, precise movement of metal making itself known in the gentle embrace of red fruit. The way it slides, the way it accelerates from the wetness of the faucet’s downpour still all over the berries and now sprawled onto the cutting board too. It’s even better when it’s punctuated with that deft thunk of the knife against the board’s face. Then followed by another, then a third, then a fourth—a rhythm of bladework splitting a delicacy’s gentle body, seeds and all, into thin discs.
(And, as a deserved tax and sweet treat, one or two little pieces of fruit swiped and popped into her mouth without a care.)
She doesn’t eat strawberries as often anymore. Primarily because Ling-Ying is allergic to them. Sunwoo does love her strawberries, yes, but she loves sharing meals with Ling even more, and will choose to forsaken her rubied fruit any and every day of the week rather than even toying with the thought of letting Ling eat alone.
They always try to share at least one meal a day together.
Usually dinner—lunch was more a hangout and gossip hour with the friends closer to Sunwoo in age—but she’s always down to pull up a chair at Ling’s table at the end of the day and share stories against the sunset background. It’s mostly Sunwoo yapping and Ling listening, which sometimes makes Sunwoo terribly anxious that she’s being a bother or overbearing the conversation—but then she’d learned Ling actually prefers to listen more than she speaks. In fact, the healer actually becomes more concerned and restless when it’s too quiet and Sunwoo seems like she’s had too much on her mind to say a word. So to ease both their minds, Sunwoo’s comfortably welcome to go on and on about anything. Everything. Just something.
Ling also wears perfume whenever they’re together. Maybe to combat the stench of barbeque that stains into their shirts. Sometimes it’s a cheery scent with bright notes, something laces of citrus at the ends. Sometimes, lilac and lavender, or floral depths that smell like the first step into a florist’s shop and all the pollen smacking you head-on in the face.
Jett has smelled these notes a lot these days. The scent lingers around, even when she’s heard Ling’s footsteps wander around the corner or the door shuts after her as she dips from the room—and the perfume stalls. The citrus smells wander close, still. The lilac and lavender, the floral depths, they all sit down and make themselves at home, leave their shoes by the door, even, and lay around Sunwoo until she’s half-convinced Kira’s growing flowers in every wall of the building—that’s why the smell won’t leave.
They don’t ever smell like strawberries.
Another weird smell that’s wrapped itself tight around Sunwoo’s nose— Phoenix. Jamie, more accurately.
And—okay, it’s not just one smell, that’d be kinda weird, right?
It’s a ton of smells. A treasure trove of them.
It’s the cocoa and shea aromas that always go in his hair. It’s the peppermint oil in his scalp some days, too, gifted to him by Astra some few months ago and he hasn’t let it go since.
It’s the Sauvage fragrance he wears everyday. It’s a blending of citrus and woody scents, layered top notes spread on in bergamot and lemon, middle notes of pepper and lavender tucked in, atop the foundation of amber and patchouli.
If that sounds like a lot, it’s because it is.
It’s one of the few things Sunwoo hasn’t teased him for though, as extra as it seems. She’s never been a big perfume kid herself—a daily shower and deodorant is more than enough to smell bearable, and good, basic hygiene is all the effort she needs to put in (and all the effort she’s willing to put in, if you could also argue skin serums and toners and primers are also good, basic hygiene).
(Glass skin and makeup are the avenues she’s willing to go to bat for, while Ling-Ying and Jamie sweat over their extensive hair care and expensive fragrances, and Sun’s long accepted this.)
Like the sound of strawberries, or the taste of them, or the feeling of them closely held in between one’s fingers—Jamie’s cologne is something she never gets sick of. If only because it’s associated with him. If only because the first waft of citrus and wood blown into the room is a sign that he’s entered, and if only because the deep inhale of amber and patchouli comfort her when she’s hugging him tight, nose buried into his collarbone or shoulder.
In absence of the warmth of hugs, there’s been a lot of smelling his cologne around as of late.
There’s been a lot of hearing his voice too, but not really.
Like, humming. Like, his melodic tone in her ears, but no words really being formed. Like, sentences and statements, pleads and begs, dialogues after dialogues, and she never seems to understand what he’s talking about. She never remembers it either. He stops speaking and every sentence is erased as quickly as it was written in her mind, like marker-on-white-boards swiped clean in one swift movement of the sleeve. She just knows it was him.
… Or does she?
She hasn’t seen his face often these days.
Maybe she’s just hearing things. Given what she does for a living, maybe hearing things that aren’t there is just a long overdue symptom of PTSD or something, or something akin to it. Maybe she shouldn’t be surprised she’s losing her mind a little more now, given all the fighting they do. Maybe it was only a matter of time before she began feeling worse for wear.
But she feels equal amounts of comfort when she’s hearing his voice and something about it drenches all fires of worry in her chest. Ironic; a firebird extinguishing all stress from her mind.
And yet, that’s the way things have played out.
His voice hangs around longest. There is Ling's gentle tone, there’s Tayane’s louder voice and raspier words that come in and out every now and again—usually chased by the sweetness of Klara’s. The occasional lower tones of Nicole and Ryo come by, too. The gruffness of Brimstone’s voice and constant sighs from his throat join the chorus a little more sparingly. Surely there’s been more, but those are some of the most constant.
Jamie’s is always the one that sticks the most.
It hurts the most when his voice’s vanished, too. When he finishes talking for the day and has drifted out of the room, and she doesn’t hear him again for what feels like forever and a half.
What would make him stay?
… Does Jamie like strawberries too?
Because, holy fuck, Sunwoo cannot stop thinking about how much she’s craving strawberries right now. It’s—everytime her brain even begins to jump to something new—it’s right back to them…!
It’s not just—it’s not just cutting them, or the fun of washing them, or even mushing them relentlessly to paste and sludge to make jam from them—she needs to taste the sweet rush of summer perfectly compacted into that small red package—and she can think of no other person better to share them with than him.
And for starters, he’s not allergic to them like Ling is, so that possibility could actually come true.
It doesn’t matter what else they’d be shared with. Whether it’s strawberries assorted into a fruit salad, or in the chorus of bananas, oranges, grapes, and more around melted chocolate for a dulce fondue—just whatever it is, let there be strawberries with it —and Jamie, too.
Please.
There’s—
—his voice, it came by again today. It comes by everyday, maybe. It comes by periodically, with enough time between intervals to make it feel like 24 full hours have passed.
But the sounds of his shoes never left, and were never preceded by the pleading and begging sound of him desperately spewing line after line as he’s been doing these last few days. It’s always—
Talking, then,
Pleading, then,
Footsteps, then,
Silence.
Loneliness.
Hunger.
His voice has calmed, but the click of his shoes wandering away never sounded. He hasn’t left. This is her chance to ask him what’s been on her mind persistently.
For the first time in what feels like forever, the weights over Jett’s eyes float off into the atmosphere.
White greets her—blinding light, that melts and simmers down against the painted walls within seconds. Fuzziness to her vision scatters away, into hiding, leaving clarity only in her gaze as she studies the scene before her;
Seated in a black chair with his face cradled into his own palms, posture hunched forward like a shrimp; concave and compact, sullen and lifeless, defeated —Jamie is there. Silent, but there.
He doesn’t smell like cocoa and peppermint oil or Sauvage today. His hair looks a little dry, curls frizzing, uncared for. Unlike him. The Queen of England wouldn’t whine over her appearance as much as he does for his own, but he’s particular as can be, refusing to leave his room if a single orange strand or thread of his shirt was out of place.
By the glance of a loose, untucked t-shirt on his abdomen and boring gray slacks over his legs, he looks like he’s not only just rolled out of bed, but grabbed the nearest combination of tops and bottoms and threw it on; as if his only care today was to look manageable and not alive. Not like himself.
He hasn’t quite sounded like himself either. The pleading and begging she’s sworn she’s heard from him lately, it’s not like him. Nowhere near his levels of boisterous confidence and passionate theatrics just to make her laugh. It’s been pitiable, really. But heartbreaking, even moreso.
It’s always something along the lines of, “Please stay.”
“Stay with us, Sun.”
“Stay here with me.”
Huh. She thought she’d forgotten half his ramblings—(she still has for the most part) but those words in particular, he repeats them the most. Like he’s in one of his plays, reciting a script he’s memorized. It’s always something like that.
She wants him to stay too. And she’s already got an idea of what could make him reluctant to leave;
“Jamie,” she starts.
His head snaps up to attention.
His eyes have dark circles stained underneath him. His face is dull and dry, like he’s skipped his skincare routine this past week or so. She’ll scold him over it later, when he isn’t staring at her with wide eyes, in disbelief. Shoulders frozen too, chest unmoving, like he’s forgotten how to breathe. His elbows are still propped up in his lap, his face just a few inches from his up-turned palms.
Her elbows are laid flat against the linen of the bed, leaving room for the needle plunged deep into her vein to sit comfortably. It looks like water is flowing into her, by the glance of clear liquid running true from a cord clung to an IV bag next to her.
She doesn’t care about that.
“Jamie,” she mutters again through the raspy layer of sleep still in her voice, “Let’s… let’s eat strawberries, Jamie. Come eat some strawberries with—with me. Yeah?”
“... Sun…” He half-whispers, half-chokes out through eyes glistening quickly. “Sun—yeah! Yes, fam, whatever you want! Whatever you want, Sunwoo, just—” Jamie all but leaps out of his chair. He looks around the room, peering behind the white curtain dividing her bed from the remainder of the world. A second after, he curses under his breath when he doesn’t seem to spot what he wants.
He turns to her immediately. His hands are outstretched, but distant, still. Like he can’t decide if he wants to hold her, if he should.
“Dammit—Sunwoo, just— stay! Stay here, stay with us! I’ve—gotta go grab Sage, I gotta go grab her ‘n Brim, but you stay!” There’s that desperation to his tone. The begging she’s heard from him these past few days. “I’ll get you all the strawberries in the world that you want, I promise! I swear on it, but you’ve gotta keep your eyes open ‘til ‘m back, okay?”
She tells her head to nod and it does so, a few delayed seconds after.
The tears breaking free from his eyes do bother her. More than she’d like to admit, really. But she’s so exhausted right now, her brain can’t seem to remember how to access any emotion other than being tired out of her mind.
But she can try, for him.
“I’ll stay, Jamie.”