Illuminations
Illuminations
For: quiescentme
Rating: PG
Length: ~1685 words
Summary: Lu Han meets Kyungsoo and reads too much French poetry.
Warning(s): none
Author's Note: Arthur Rimbaud was a French poet who had a fairly destructive relationship with French poet Paul Verlaine. References are mostly from Rimbaud's famous poem Le dormeur du val. The title is taken from an uncompleted suite of prose poems by Rimbaud. The film mentioned, The Dreamers, was relatively controversial when it hit cinemas in 2003 and may not be French tragedy per se, but definitely taps into the French aesthetic. Definitely not a first date film.
Thanks so much to my recipient for the amazing prompts (I hope I did at least some justice to this one), p/a tlist (I love all of you!), J for starting me off and helping me at the end, A and R for being encouraging, T for taking so much interest and feedback and S, without whom I can do nothing. ♡ Also a big thanks to the mods for being so understanding!
The first time Lu Han saw Kyungsoo it was in the midst of a crowd and there were people all around and he was distracted by the colours and lights and sounds but then there he was. And time stopped. Lu Han wanted nothing more than to reach out, dropping his books and his camera and all the now unimportant pieces of his daily life, overshadowed by the longing that filled his finger tips. But this strange foreign feeling filled him with so much terror that he only gripped his books and things closer to his beating heart and turned and stumbled away through the elbows and knees and shoulders that seemed to stand in his way.
•••
dear diary:
Today was the first time in my life that I stood watching, as the seconds around me froze, crystallizing, and I saw them shatter in a million pieces on the ground.
I saw his face and I thought that time would stand still forever.
I saw his face and I was terrified that time would stop, leaving me frozen in that moment of forever, seeing him but never being able to touch.
•••
"I saw a boy today."
Lu Han liked to talk to the statue of Arthur Rimbaud by the library. Arthur was a pretty cool person, even if his life hadn't been exactly great.
"Did that ever happen to you?" He looked at the young man's sad face.
"What was it like when you met Paul?"
Lu Han stared deep into Arthur's eyes, but the brass statue only looked deeper into eternity.
•••
The first time Lu Han spoke to Kyungsoo he was in the library, immersed in symbolist poetry and running the words over his tongue and between his teeth -
"Hello." A voice interrupted his revery.
Lu Han paused, mid-thought, the last word skipping over and over in his head like a broken record cresson- cresson- cresson-
"...bleu?" bleu?
He looked up, surprised. The boy looked amused.
"I said, I've read that book too."
Oh.
They both looked at the cover of the book Lu Han was holding in his hands.
"Rimbaud's kind of sad though." The boy adjusted the strap of his backpack. "I have a soft spot for Baudelaire myself."
He laughed. The sound was sweet. Lu Han wanted to say something but he didn't know what to say.
He tried to think of something smart but all he could hear was deux trous rouges...
Lu Han looked up from the page - the boy was walking away - he was still tongue-tied but -
"Do you think he died happy?"
The words burst out of his throat before he could catch them up, tangled in his teeth and tongue, and stuff them back into the darkness of his chest where they belonged.
Lu Han blushed and looked away; the sun was setting outside the window and he blamed it for the flushed tint of his complexion.
The boy laughed again.
Please do that forever.
"I wouldn't know," he said, "but he had a lot of things to be unhappy about."
Like everything. Unhappiness wasn't what Lu Han was feeling at that moment though.
"I'm Kyungsoo, by the way."
Lu Han inclined his head in greeting.
"I'm - Lu Han -"... His voice trailed off when he saw that Kyungsoo was grinning.
"I know," he said, wry amusement flavouring his vowels. "Your name is listed in the borrower history of all the books I need to take out."
Lu Han was embarrassed, fumbling with his papers.
"I just like -"
"That's okay," Kyungsoo said, turning and making his way between the stacks. Lu Han gazed longing at his retreating back. I guess I'll never talk to him again.
"I'll talk to you again." With that parting shot, Kyungsoo disappeared around the shelf of mid-century French literature.
Lu Han was left behind, two bullet holes steaming in his chest.
Bullseye
•••
dear diary:
Life is made of first times. The first glance, the first meeting, the first words spoken, the first touch. The first heartbreak.
I am afraid. I am afraid that I will meet him again and I will fall in love - no - I'm already in love but it's just with an idea! I don't even know him! And yet the tiny pieces I've gathered together: he knows Rimbaud, he knows Baudelaire, he reads the same books I do...
But even if it works it won't last. So I'd rather break my own heart instead.
•••
"Were you excited when you got the letter saying that you could go?"
Lu Han had taken his homework outside to sit on the bench under the oak tree. It was centuries old; probably older than the school itself. From here he could see Arthur standing alone in the sun. He looked - expectant - like someone staring into the distance, waiting for the wavering mirage of a person to appear on the horizon.
Before you realize that a mirage is a mirage and you'll be parched and thirsty forever.
"You didn't know about Mathilde then, did you..."
•••
The first time Kyungsoo broke Lu Han's heart, Lu Han was waiting by the librarian's desk, hardcover clutched to his chest, heart hummingbird-beating against his ribs to make his finger tips tingle.
I hope he likes it.
Lu Han had miraculously come across a replica of the first edition of Rimbaud's Une Saison en Enfer and he couldn't think of anyone better to share his bottled-up joy with than the boy who also liked French poetry.
He tapped his feet impatiently, then caught himself and looked guiltily over at the librarian sitting at her desk, but she only smiled at his uncharacteristic exuberance.
Calm down.
Every time someone walked into the library he took a breath and leaned forward to - and every time he saw that it wasn't Kyungsoo he exhaled slowly and sank back down.
Maybe he's not coming to the library today.
He was just gathering together the scattered ashes of his expectations when a sound drifted past his ear -
that's his voice.
The librarian smiled at him as he approached the doorway, heart soaring my river sings and eyes bright bubbling with sunlight before a cold thought froze him in his tracks.
who is he talking to?
Lu Han tripped over his feet scrambling back behind the stacks in sudden terror, scraping his elbow on the shelf and burning his leg on the carpet.
Peering around the shelf, he saw Kyungsoo walk into the library. Beside him was another boy. A tall boy.
A pretty boy.
Every heart beat pumping out the crimson streaming from the deep holes in his heart, staining the carpet and making the ground around his feet soggy with massacred dreams, Lu Han watched as Kyungsoo led the boy around, smiling and pulling out books for him to look at.
French poetry.
His eyes were wet.
He needed to leave, to breathe, and burst from between the stacks to dart out of the library door, leaving a startled Kyungsoo standing in the literature section.
•••
dear diary
I have been broken into ten thousand tiny pieces; the fragments of my soul are scattered from here to eternity and only from the moon can I begin to even recognize my own thoughts. I should like to asphyxiate there, slowly, seeing everything that happened in my life from afar, remote and noble and never close and gritty in the dirt, tears running down my face.
•••
"After everything with Paul was over, did you regret even that first moment of recognition?"
Lu Han stared at the statue, who refused to look back. He felt scattered: remote. The clouds blew by overhead, pushing the moments with them.
"Excuse me?"
He spun, dropping his bookbag and watching helplessly as loose papers cascaded onto the ground, the Saisons replica sliding out with them to land, abandoned, on the cement.
This is the worst moment of my life.
Kyungsoo, ignoring Lu Han's flustered expression, bent to examine the book on the ground.
His eyes lit up.
"You have a replica of the first edition of Saisons?"
Lu Han's despairing torrent of thoughts slowed to a steady stream.
"Yes?" he said tentatively.
Kyungsoo reached out a hand but then looked up at Lu Han questioningly.
"May I?"
Lu Han nodded. The steady stream slowed to a meandering creek.
Kyungsoo picked the book up off of the ground, along with the loose papers which he gathered into a neat stack before handing them back to Lu Han, who held them limply in his grasp.
"This is terrific!"
Kyungsoo beamed at Lu Han over the pages of the open replica before pausing to give him a sharp glare.
Lu Han shrank.
"What was with you at the library today?"
Kyungsoo looked annoyed, confused, and...slightly hurt? Lu Han held his breath; the current froze altogether.
"I didn't want to interrupt you with your...?" His voice trailed upwards into a question.
"Oh, you mean Jongin?" Kyungsoo looked relieved. "He's my younger step-brother; I was just helping him find some books for an assignment."
"Your step-brother?"
The current began flowing backwards.
Kyungsoo leaned over to flick him on the forehead.
"You're really dumb, you know that?"
Lu Han was shocked but Kyungsoo only laughed.
"Come on! You have to pry your nose out of the pages of your French tragedy once in a while!"
Kyungsoo poked his arm before leading him off by the hand.
"There's a film showing at the Cinémathèque today - it looks interesting!"
Lu Han looked at his hand wrapped in Kyungsoo's fingers and smiled.
They watched Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers, which marked the first time Lu Han smacked Kyungsoo over the head with a cinema programme.
Kyungsoo only grinned, and didn't make any promises.
For: quiescentme
Rating: PG
Length: ~1685 words
Summary: Lu Han meets Kyungsoo and reads too much French poetry.
Warning(s): none
Author's Note: Arthur Rimbaud was a French poet who had a fairly destructive relationship with French poet Paul Verlaine. References are mostly from Rimbaud's famous poem Le dormeur du val. The title is taken from an uncompleted suite of prose poems by Rimbaud. The film mentioned, The Dreamers, was relatively controversial when it hit cinemas in 2003 and may not be French tragedy per se, but definitely taps into the French aesthetic. Definitely not a first date film.
Thanks so much to my recipient for the amazing prompts (I hope I did at least some justice to this one), p/a tlist (I love all of you!), J for starting me off and helping me at the end, A and R for being encouraging, T for taking so much interest and feedback and S, without whom I can do nothing. ♡ Also a big thanks to the mods for being so understanding!
The first time Lu Han saw Kyungsoo it was in the midst of a crowd and there were people all around and he was distracted by the colours and lights and sounds but then there he was. And time stopped. Lu Han wanted nothing more than to reach out, dropping his books and his camera and all the now unimportant pieces of his daily life, overshadowed by the longing that filled his finger tips. But this strange foreign feeling filled him with so much terror that he only gripped his books and things closer to his beating heart and turned and stumbled away through the elbows and knees and shoulders that seemed to stand in his way.
•••
dear diary:
Today was the first time in my life that I stood watching, as the seconds around me froze, crystallizing, and I saw them shatter in a million pieces on the ground.
I saw his face and I thought that time would stand still forever.
I saw his face and I was terrified that time would stop, leaving me frozen in that moment of forever, seeing him but never being able to touch.
•••
"I saw a boy today."
Lu Han liked to talk to the statue of Arthur Rimbaud by the library. Arthur was a pretty cool person, even if his life hadn't been exactly great.
"Did that ever happen to you?" He looked at the young man's sad face.
"What was it like when you met Paul?"
Lu Han stared deep into Arthur's eyes, but the brass statue only looked deeper into eternity.
•••
The first time Lu Han spoke to Kyungsoo he was in the library, immersed in symbolist poetry and running the words over his tongue and between his teeth -
"Hello." A voice interrupted his revery.
Lu Han paused, mid-thought, the last word skipping over and over in his head like a broken record cresson- cresson- cresson-
"...bleu?" bleu?
He looked up, surprised. The boy looked amused.
"I said, I've read that book too."
Oh.
They both looked at the cover of the book Lu Han was holding in his hands.
"Rimbaud's kind of sad though." The boy adjusted the strap of his backpack. "I have a soft spot for Baudelaire myself."
He laughed. The sound was sweet. Lu Han wanted to say something but he didn't know what to say.
He tried to think of something smart but all he could hear was deux trous rouges...
Lu Han looked up from the page - the boy was walking away - he was still tongue-tied but -
"Do you think he died happy?"
The words burst out of his throat before he could catch them up, tangled in his teeth and tongue, and stuff them back into the darkness of his chest where they belonged.
Lu Han blushed and looked away; the sun was setting outside the window and he blamed it for the flushed tint of his complexion.
The boy laughed again.
Please do that forever.
"I wouldn't know," he said, "but he had a lot of things to be unhappy about."
Like everything. Unhappiness wasn't what Lu Han was feeling at that moment though.
"I'm Kyungsoo, by the way."
Lu Han inclined his head in greeting.
"I'm - Lu Han -"... His voice trailed off when he saw that Kyungsoo was grinning.
"I know," he said, wry amusement flavouring his vowels. "Your name is listed in the borrower history of all the books I need to take out."
Lu Han was embarrassed, fumbling with his papers.
"I just like -"
"That's okay," Kyungsoo said, turning and making his way between the stacks. Lu Han gazed longing at his retreating back. I guess I'll never talk to him again.
"I'll talk to you again." With that parting shot, Kyungsoo disappeared around the shelf of mid-century French literature.
Lu Han was left behind, two bullet holes steaming in his chest.
Bullseye
•••
dear diary:
Life is made of first times. The first glance, the first meeting, the first words spoken, the first touch. The first heartbreak.
I am afraid. I am afraid that I will meet him again and I will fall in love - no - I'm already in love but it's just with an idea! I don't even know him! And yet the tiny pieces I've gathered together: he knows Rimbaud, he knows Baudelaire, he reads the same books I do...
But even if it works it won't last. So I'd rather break my own heart instead.
•••
"Were you excited when you got the letter saying that you could go?"
Lu Han had taken his homework outside to sit on the bench under the oak tree. It was centuries old; probably older than the school itself. From here he could see Arthur standing alone in the sun. He looked - expectant - like someone staring into the distance, waiting for the wavering mirage of a person to appear on the horizon.
Before you realize that a mirage is a mirage and you'll be parched and thirsty forever.
"You didn't know about Mathilde then, did you..."
•••
The first time Kyungsoo broke Lu Han's heart, Lu Han was waiting by the librarian's desk, hardcover clutched to his chest, heart hummingbird-beating against his ribs to make his finger tips tingle.
I hope he likes it.
Lu Han had miraculously come across a replica of the first edition of Rimbaud's Une Saison en Enfer and he couldn't think of anyone better to share his bottled-up joy with than the boy who also liked French poetry.
He tapped his feet impatiently, then caught himself and looked guiltily over at the librarian sitting at her desk, but she only smiled at his uncharacteristic exuberance.
Calm down.
Every time someone walked into the library he took a breath and leaned forward to - and every time he saw that it wasn't Kyungsoo he exhaled slowly and sank back down.
Maybe he's not coming to the library today.
He was just gathering together the scattered ashes of his expectations when a sound drifted past his ear -
that's his voice.
The librarian smiled at him as he approached the doorway, heart soaring my river sings and eyes bright bubbling with sunlight before a cold thought froze him in his tracks.
who is he talking to?
Lu Han tripped over his feet scrambling back behind the stacks in sudden terror, scraping his elbow on the shelf and burning his leg on the carpet.
Peering around the shelf, he saw Kyungsoo walk into the library. Beside him was another boy. A tall boy.
A pretty boy.
Every heart beat pumping out the crimson streaming from the deep holes in his heart, staining the carpet and making the ground around his feet soggy with massacred dreams, Lu Han watched as Kyungsoo led the boy around, smiling and pulling out books for him to look at.
French poetry.
His eyes were wet.
He needed to leave, to breathe, and burst from between the stacks to dart out of the library door, leaving a startled Kyungsoo standing in the literature section.
•••
dear diary
I have been broken into ten thousand tiny pieces; the fragments of my soul are scattered from here to eternity and only from the moon can I begin to even recognize my own thoughts. I should like to asphyxiate there, slowly, seeing everything that happened in my life from afar, remote and noble and never close and gritty in the dirt, tears running down my face.
•••
"After everything with Paul was over, did you regret even that first moment of recognition?"
Lu Han stared at the statue, who refused to look back. He felt scattered: remote. The clouds blew by overhead, pushing the moments with them.
"Excuse me?"
He spun, dropping his bookbag and watching helplessly as loose papers cascaded onto the ground, the Saisons replica sliding out with them to land, abandoned, on the cement.
This is the worst moment of my life.
Kyungsoo, ignoring Lu Han's flustered expression, bent to examine the book on the ground.
His eyes lit up.
"You have a replica of the first edition of Saisons?"
Lu Han's despairing torrent of thoughts slowed to a steady stream.
"Yes?" he said tentatively.
Kyungsoo reached out a hand but then looked up at Lu Han questioningly.
"May I?"
Lu Han nodded. The steady stream slowed to a meandering creek.
Kyungsoo picked the book up off of the ground, along with the loose papers which he gathered into a neat stack before handing them back to Lu Han, who held them limply in his grasp.
"This is terrific!"
Kyungsoo beamed at Lu Han over the pages of the open replica before pausing to give him a sharp glare.
Lu Han shrank.
"What was with you at the library today?"
Kyungsoo looked annoyed, confused, and...slightly hurt? Lu Han held his breath; the current froze altogether.
"I didn't want to interrupt you with your...?" His voice trailed upwards into a question.
"Oh, you mean Jongin?" Kyungsoo looked relieved. "He's my younger step-brother; I was just helping him find some books for an assignment."
"Your step-brother?"
The current began flowing backwards.
Kyungsoo leaned over to flick him on the forehead.
"You're really dumb, you know that?"
Lu Han was shocked but Kyungsoo only laughed.
"Come on! You have to pry your nose out of the pages of your French tragedy once in a while!"
Kyungsoo poked his arm before leading him off by the hand.
"There's a film showing at the Cinémathèque today - it looks interesting!"
Lu Han looked at his hand wrapped in Kyungsoo's fingers and smiled.
They watched Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers, which marked the first time Lu Han smacked Kyungsoo over the head with a cinema programme.
Kyungsoo only grinned, and didn't make any promises.