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Firstone reminds Tle of spring.
On the way he carried the scent of a garden with an effortless grace of a breeze in early spring.
He was a blend of fresh lilacs, apple blossoms and daffodils with an air surrounding him that was both soothingly delicate and vibrantly green.
In his presence, he carried a warm halo of energy and left positivity in his wake.
Like summer raindrops that fizz as they splash down on earth, he leaves an impacting presence, a shimmering trail of confidence on anyone he meets.
Firstone reminds Tle of spring.
On the way he moved with a radiance stolen from the sun. A golden brilliance that felt as though the day had only just begun. His hair, caught in a restless and salt-kissed breeze, flew with softness that puts the shifting tides at ease. And his smile, always a shimmering spark, a beacon so bright it could vanish the dark.
Tle watched him from the shadows with quiet wariness, fearing that to gaze upon such a burning beaming light would surely strike him blind.
He tried to keep his distance and drifted further into the gloom, content to remain a silent observer in the dark, but Firstone was a tide that refused to leave any shore untouched.
Firstone didn’t just enter his life.
He broke upon it—barging in like a sudden cresting wave.
But where there should have been dark thunderous skies, he brought a torrential downpour of sunlight and high sweeping clouds of hope. Like a warm breeze melting ice, his words softened his heart.
And while Tle sat anchored to a saturated earth, shivering with a bone-deep cold, Firstone was the warmth that burned ever fiercely. A vital heat that refused to be put out.
He wrapped him in an embrace of velvet vines and from the very soul of his sorrows, flowers bloomed.
𓇢𓆸
Firstone reminds Tle of spring.
Him who is full of life.
Full of everything that a winter like him lacks.
𓇢𓆸
Firstone wasn’t ready to let go.
He could see that as he stared up at the sky and pleaded with the stars to return the days that had gone by.
Tle, ever so gently, smiled. The corners of his lips almost reached his ears and his eyes reflected such gentleness he had never shown to anyone.
There were tears that welled up Firstone’s eyes and he wondered.
Was this how it always felt to have someone who genuinely cared?
Was this how it always felt to have someone waste their precious tears on someone as undeserving as him?
It was foreign. Indecipherable. He couldn’t understand the warmth that had spread on his chest—the way it ached but also how good it was.
Was this how it always felt?
“Please, don't…”
Firstone reminded him of spring.
Even with his face streaked with tears, the sun still shone ever so bright behind him. He never looked gloomy. Never looked dull. Even with the tears trailing down his cheeks, he was still an explosion of vibrant colors. He was still a beacon of light and it was…
It was unfair.
How real he was.
The way he came out of nowhere and just showed up to where Tle was.
And that tangibility of him made his chest feel tight.
He made him feel his chest tight.
Firstone’s fingers didn’t just grab him. They burrowed. His knuckles went white as his grip tightened, his fist sinking into Tle’s chest as if his ribs were nothing more than soft earth. Tle felt the pressure deep in the hollow of his lungs—a root-deep intrusion that forced the air out from every part of him. He didn’t just hold him. Firstone reclaimed him and the sheer violent depth of it turned Tle’s blood into ice.
Because it scared him.
It scared him how absurd it was.
Because for all those wandering hands and breathless kisses they shared, all those nonstop talks about how he would move mountains and touch the skies to never see his smiles fade—
How real and true they were—
But that’s the catch, wasn’t it?
Because even if Firstone made him feel true, made him feel alive, made him feel that he deserved everything there was to him. That his love—even if it scared him to admit it—how it made him feel he could love and be loved, he couldn’t… He wouldn’t.
Tle wouldn’t stay.
“Please, don’t leave.”
He had to say something. He knew he had to say something that time. But the words just dried up and crumbled.
Because what exactly was he supposed to say?
I… I love you. I think I do.
But he didn’t.
He didn’t stay. He didn’t say it.
So he did only what he could.
Of what he could offer.
Tle came to Firstone that night with wide arms and offered a hug so tight. He wrapped his arms around his shaking shoulders, his arms caging the tremors like he could physically force his tears to subside.
That night, Tle was the one who didn’t let go.
For a long time, he let him cry. Hands gently touching the small of his back.
I’m sorry.
“Promise me. Please come back.”
How frightening, Tle thought.
It frightened him how easily Firstone could shed his tears for him when he was one undeserving man. Yet there Firstone was and in his voice, heavy and damp, there was desperation.
Tle wondered.
How many of them were truly real?
𓇢𓆸
The day when he had to leave came.
His bags were on the floor. His ticket sat idly on the coffee table.
Tle thought he would be indifferent.
He thought he had lost the ability to feel.
He pretended he didn’t care whether his father wanted him gone. But as he stared at the sheets of his bed, he didn’t reach out to smooth them down. He didn’t even straighten his pillows or move anything at all.
He only sank to the floor next to the bed and stared off into nothingness.
He knew it then.
He fought himself so desperately, clinging to his denial.
Firstone was nowhere to be found at the airport.
He expected it.
Whether his tears had been real, whether the warmth of his embrace had been genuine…
People have always been fickle. Always shifting and unreliable as a spring breeze.
Firstone reminded Tle of spring.
Spring, with its sunny days and trails of brilliant flowers rising from the earth.
However fleeting.
Like how the sun comes after the rain, winter came to take over him all over again.
Tle left with no one to bid his goodbyes.
𓇢𓆸
Tle has always preferred the ice.
At least it was honest about its coldness.
𓇢𓆸
Spring reminded Tle of Firstone. ㅤ
With the decorations hanging across the streets as people milled about the stalls and every nearby shop filled with vibrant flowers, he didn’t expect it would be the first thing he would get to celebrate in this unfamiliar place.
Spring reminded Tle of Firstone.
In the way that he was now out of his life—just as quickly as how this spring will go by.ㅤ