Work Text:
Now Playing: Sunsetz by Cigarettes After Sex
Drabble Inspired by this tweet of June.
* * *
The yearning spilled like the sunset on the beach.
Or at least, like her orange juice during breakfast.
To be honest, June could have just sent Mewnich a text message. Something simple and casual like: Hey are you busy? Do you want to go out? Or maybe something a little more truthful like: I want to see you.
It’s not like there is anything at stake. Right?
She blames her phone first. If she wasn’t holding it while hanging out with her friends, maybe her brain wouldn’t wander there at all. Anyway, the hype around the table is fading. Half of her friends are already on their phones, faces lit up by screens instead of conversation. So she opens hers too. Instagram first, then Twitter.
Nothing really, she was not even searching for her name nor checking her notifications. It was just a casual doom scroll.
Then she saw a tweet about sunsets captioned with:
If you like someone, take them to Phuket.
I told the sunset about you.
It must have been her algorithm doing its work after she slept late checking plane fares or how much would it be to book a hotel for a night or two. And it must have been the algorithm bringing Mewnich to her timeline. At this point, it almost feels natural to have their names next to each other.
To think of it, yes, June would like to blame the algorithm too.
One click leads to another. June Wanwimol opened her phone’s gallery, leading to that one specific album. Her trip to Phuket with Mewnich.
Doom scrolling.
A smile unconsciously made its way on her lips. A peek of her dimple showing.
Mewnich poses like a little boy in some photos. June chuckles at that. There was also a video clip of Mewnich chasing a small crab and tripping over her own foot and knocking some stranger’s sand castle. Mewnich’s eyes widened in shock as she ran towards June.
She could have just sent this clip to Mewnich and went on with her day. But hearing Mewnich’s P’Juneeeee and her own laugh made her stay, watching the clip a couple times more.
June was preoccupied with her little throwback that she didn’t notice one of her friends peeking behind her.
“Oh, someone here misses her work wife.”
She almost dropped her phone before glaring at her friend, “I am not.”
Her friend raised her hands in mock surrender, “Fine, fine. Sorry for surprising you. It’s not like you were doing anything suspicious at all.”
June hoped for the interest to die down, but of course, just like her, her friends do have a couple of nosy bones in their frames. They all dropped whatever they were doing to look at her.
“I…I am just checking if there’s anything to post. ForJunes and Jamons miss me.”
Half-truth. The fans always yearn for her.
Half-lie. The same fans were just fed a couple of days ago so they’re not as thirsty as June Wanwimol described them to be just to save her blushing face.
Everyone at the table could tell June was keeping something to herself. But that’s just how she is. She’ll face it when she decides to, because June Wanwimol lives on her own terms.
But because they are supportive, some of them stood from their places, to check on her gallery to cast their votes on which JuneMewnich photo she should tweet.
They were doing this for a good minute before it dawned on the group that, for the love of god, June and Mewnich took a lot of photos. Tons.
Of June.
Of Mewnich.
Pictures of them together.
“I can feel my social battery draining just from this ‘slideshow’”.
“Why do you have, like, ten photos of the same pose?”
June side-eyed her, “They’re different.”
The other person scoffed, “You moved your hand by what? A centimeter?”
Any sane person with an objective mind could see that there is barely any difference between the consecutive shots. It’s like Mewnich pressed the shutter way too hard and way too long.
She sighed. Of course, she loves her friends dearly, but like what she said in that one interview, it can be quite hard to keep up with her energy when it comes to taking pictures.
They're not like her Mewnich who will look at her teasingly, poking little fun on her penchant to take a gallery of photos, and yet, taking each pose with clicks.
She can still hear every compliment Mewnich said per image. And there were lots of those flowery words. June can remember each petal like Mewnich tucked it behind her brain.
June took her phone from her friends, taking the matter of swiping with her own hands. She tries to hide the little shyness she felt while having a live audience look at the time she spent with Mewnich. Not that there is anything private in the photos. It’s just June taking photos with her friend who she happens to work with, and share a ship with, and occasionally flirts with. Just like how June is with her other girl friends.
Although, of course, minus the work, the ship and the flirting.
But still.
June was about to give up pretending that she’s actually looking for something to share until another swipe.
June held her breath amongst the ooohs of her friends. June hasn't posted this photo before.
A sunset selfie when they’re about to leave the beach and return to their room. Mewnich is holding the phone, her arm lifted so the frame catches only their faces, shoulders, and the upper part of their swimsuits. The sky behind them is streaked with orange and fading lilac, evening creeping in.
Most of the photo is dim. One can barely see them. Surely the reason why it didn’t make the to-post list.
But if the viewer looks close enough. Maybe a little longer, they could see how June could have stayed in the moment forever. Her expression is calm, her shoulder bare and glinting faintly with saltwater. Beside her, Mewnich is grinning, her collarbone catching the last bit of sun
June stared fondly on the orange hue reflecting on the waves, suddenly realizing how her hometown became more beautiful.
Then she felt gentle nudges and teasing remarks from her circle, “Ah, what an ideal couple!”
Ideal…?
June waits for the internal pressure. It doesn’t come. Before Mewnich, she used to hate that kind of perception. People looking at them and deciding, so casually, that they were some embodiment of love.
Because what if they aren’t? What if they failed? What if they didn’t workout?
Because June knows herself: the parts of her that are sharp and selfish, the regrets she pretends not to revisit. And she knows Mewnich is flawed too. Too careful, stubborn, reckless with her own heart even when she tries to guard everyone else’s.
Once, while scrolling late at night, June came across a fan’s post reflecting on how people often see their own desires in the fictional or real pairings they romanticize. They project themselves into the dynamic, thinking: Yes, this must be what love looks like.
The post had gone on to describe what JuneMewnich meant to them: Something warm, stable, and constant, like daylight being the natural proof of the sun, like the simple certainty of two people sharing breakfast in the morning. The fan ended with a confession, a quiet longing to give and receive that kind of love.
June had wondered, then, how much of it was true. And how unfair it felt that she could picture it so clearly.
Mewnich as the morning light, the soft warmth of waking up, the sound of forks against plates and a mug pressed into her hands. She could see breakfasts and sunbeams and bare feet on cool tiles.
But every sunrise has its counterpart.
Even the brightest days end. Their schedules rarely align. It honestly felt like a long distance relationship. It feels like the universe is teasing them with what they could have but don’t.
There are dinners that will never happen. Tables they won’t sit at. Recipes they’ll never try together. They won’t sleep together. They’ll end up in separate beds after their schedules together.
And still, the wanting doesn’t go away.
June pointed at them and chuckled, “Us? Really?”
June has this concept of the “ideal” lasting forever. Simply because: how can the right person and right time ever end?
She can never see them as something ideal because she’s self-aware of how relationships can come to a halt. How strangers become friends to something more to strangers again. And how, it is, just like that, the road leading her to Mewnich would eventually diverge.
Whatever string of fate that brought them together would eventually untangle with one end attached to a balloon.
She can almost picture it clearly. That at some point, even the heaven's apology would have to return home.
Up there.
Away from her.
June’s also painfully aware that her line of thoughts threads thinly between pessimistic and realistic. To be fair, she’s been dealt with bad cards and she has found herself coursing through partnerships like she’s bluffing.
She has long exchanged the heart on her sleeves in favor of aces. She has to. She’d rather have an advantage than for everyone to see and poke where it matters.
And yet, every time she looks at the image of her and Mewnich during one…two…three…well, surprisingly several sunsets, June can see Mewnich’s features both painted in tangerines and shadows.
As if reminding June that Mewnich has been peeling her citrus for quite some time now; and how, there are just parts of Mewnich that she’ll never have.
And how, oddly enough, while dealing with each other’s dark corners, Mewnich built them forts and June brought warm fairy lights. If she closes her eyes just enough, she can imagine her body frame getting smaller and next to her little knees, she can feel Mewnich’s inner child getting as cozy.
June long loved sunsets because she grew near the coast. When she was a child, sunsets meant bright enough to play without the prickly heat.
Just enough.
Just right.
But even that has to end and eventually stars will fill the vastness of the sky.
June used to find it ironic for one star to ‘disappear’ only to be replaced by more of its kind. Once that is farther from where she stood.
June found it hard to call ‘June and Mewnich’ as ideal because they felt too much like the sunset.
[Perfect enough to watch everything unfold]
[And then go home.]
[Eventually, it will pass by.]
[And everything will be replaced by little memories hanging on June’s walls and haunting her evenings.]
But one one sunrise, June realizes how Mewnich is her sunset and she’ll never leave her sky.
Perhaps it’s too early to say:
“Mewnich, do you know that if, whatever it is between us, becomes nothing but constellations, I have a feeling that I won’t drink myself to sleep. From my window at my hometown where our story began, I’ll peek and trace the outline in the sky like how I did to the moles on your face the first time I slept next to you.”
But June had this feeling blooming in her chest that no matter what happens, she’ll never regret Mewnich. She’ll never wish for her name not to be next to Mewnich’s.
Even if the two of them happened and over with at some point, it will never stop from happening inside her head.
“Cherishing something even after it long ends might be my forever. With my aces upturned and transparent. With my heart back on my sleeves for you to draw ribbons and smileys. I am more than happy and content to share this gamble and table with you.”
Maybe her friends are right.
Maybe June’s right about her standards of ideal.
Maybe she can keep Mewnich forever.