Work Text:
My gentle reader, I perceive
How patiently you've waited,
And I'm afraid that you expect
Some tale will be related.
O reader! had you in your mind
Such stores as silent thought can bring,
O gentle reader! you would find
A tale in every thing.
What more I have to say is short,
I hope you'll kindly take it;
It is no tale; but should you think,
Perhaps a tale you'll make it.
“Listen,” Mint says, monopolizing half the couch with her limbs, almost butting her head against Phuwin’s hip and sending him flying off the other side.
With a hand, Phuwin braces himself against the arm of the couch, drawing in his legs closer, “The hell-”
“If I were P’Pond’s partner—”
Phuwin knows exactly where this is going. “Which you’re not.”
“Shut up. If I were P’Pond’s partner, I would’ve married him thirteen years ago.” She has a frighteningly serious look in her eyes, which makes Phuwin sit up straighter, his phone now forgotten in his lap, “I would’ve built a fucking time machine to go back in time and marry him. My major would be Physics, my minor? Cult psychology.”
Phuwin pretends to consider this notion: “Hm. Child marriage is illegal.”
“Not as illegal as P’Pond being single, bro.”
“I’ve also literally never seen Pond—appreciating—women like that.”
Mint’s eyes darken with a knowing weight, “I knew it. Which is why I’m going back in time to marry him—you know, even before he could make up his mind about women.”
Phuwin opens his mouth, closes it. “That’s.”
“Genius?”
“Not how it works.”
Mint shrugs her thin shoulders, seemingly set in her ideology, but her words echo in Phuwin’s head long after his short road trip with his uni friends is over, and the others have waved him off with many lighthearted threats to find more time to spend with them. It’s not even that Phuwin has told them about Pond a lot; his friends have just been gently probing into his work life for years, even before Phuwin learnt to spot it. Before, he would’ve wanted to retreat from that kind of attention, that curiosity, but not now. The Rendezvous fancon is still fresh in his mind, like a beautiful knife-slit. The wound is minimal, the blood is pleasant red, and the pain is aesthetic.
A reassurance more than anything. A reminder that he’s alive, still.
Joking or not, Mint has a point.