Work Text:
It’s a weird limbo sort of state you enter when the water boils. You make this plan to cook whatever it is that you’re having and then just have to wait. And in that time, the sort of time where it doesn’t feel real, almost like the in between of Christmas and New Year’s, six days that you don’t really think about ever except for when it’s happening and you have to figure out what to do with yourself, your mind wanders.
It wanders to the dark and dusty corners of yourself, the parts where you rarely look too close— but the intriguing parts nonetheless. The ones that feel like staring into a mirror just a little too long and the parts that feel like the empty corner of your bedroom where something could be watching. You seep into the corners of your mind, to the parts where you normally try not to linger. The people who didn’t stay and the people who you left.
When the water boils, you see their faces. When the water boils, you hear their laughter and you feel their sorrows. The water bubbles on and you are left with the eyes that matched yours and the girl who had the very same exact height as you did— you measured it in math class. You see your childhood best friend and hear the promises you made each other in fourth grade. You see the girl with the blonde hair who was too rich for her own good and you understand that now but you didn’t always and you remember how it felt when she stopped calling you back.
You hear the bands you loved growing up and you remember how it felt to dance in the rain. By the time the water boils, you’ve remembered how it felt to be someone’s entire world and you’ve felt how it feels to have your other half. But now it’s boiling and you have to continue on. So you push those memories back to the corners where they came from and try not to linger on the thought that maybe they think about you too, when their water boils.