Work Text:
You draw a thick line in the sand, coarse grit sticking to your fingertips and trapping itself under your nails. A gull cries in the distance, the gentle slosh of water at your heels. The tide is coming in, and soon your drawing will be gone.
You hate it.
Hate the impermanence of your creation, hate making things that are not built to last. What is the point?
Taehyung had been different.
So many times you'd watched him, building intricate sculptures that he knew would be swallowed up mere hours after the moment of completion–if the sea even gave him that long.
He saw beauty in the fleeting moments, in the transient art that could never be recaptured, never recreated in quite the same way.
You thought it was stupid. You told him so, and that was the first time you nearly broke up.
A few more times had followed; fiery discussions that brought you both to the breaking point. But they had always brought you closer together than ever before, once resolved.
No, what broke you apart forever ended up being far less fleeting, far more cruel in its permanence.
Now you're back at this beach, all alone with not a single fucking thing to show for it.
You're not sure what made you continue Taehyung’s work. Maybe a naive hope that you would finally understand. Waiting for that moment of epiphany, allowing you to connect with him even through death.
You don't have an epiphany. You just hate the drawings and sculptures, clumsy things compared to what your fiance used to create.
You don't stop making them, either.
Weeks pass by, months, then a year, and you spend any possible free time at Taehyung's beach, or so you can't help but think of it. You're not a visitor nor a tourist here, not like the other people who take their walks or fish at the pier or play in the water. No, this place belongs to Taehyung, and you are merely its caretaker in his absence.
Whenever work and other responsibilities allow for it, you are here. Through rain and wind, weather be damned; though on the worst days you settle for a warm drink at the local café, where the owner knows your order by heart. She also knows you didn't use to come alone, and always brings you a slice of cake on the house. She never comments on your sand creations, and that is why you keep coming back to her café.
You accidentally get good at it, too, at sculpting with the brittle, finicky material. You hadn't meant to, but improvement is just one of those things that slowly starts happening when you stubbornly keep at something for long enough.
The sea does not care, of course, continuing its unfeeling erasure without regard of beauty or skill. However, your works do start to draw attention from other beachgoers–just like Taehyung’s used to, you think numbly–and sometimes they even go out of their way to compliment you.
You don't like it, but Taehyung was always kind to his admirers, so you will be, too.
Usually, you ignore them as much as they let you; until one day, a bystander catches your attention in turn.
He doesn't look like a beach guy, covered in a black sweater with matching bucket hat, black shorts underneath that show off pale, skinny legs and knobbly knees. He does wear beach-appropriate slides, showing off ten perfectly pretty toes. A dot of sunscreen still sticks to his nose, his dark eyes stained by a weariness that makes you suspect he wants to be here as little as you do.
A rowdy group of guys playing beach volleyball nearby call out to him but he waves them off, preferring to watch you work.
You're used to an audience, but something about this man unnerves you. It's like he isn't just watching, he is seeing.
Eventually he shuffles up to you, after you put the finishing touches on an extravagant sand tiger. "That's really beautiful," he says. His voice is deeper than you expected, yet fits him perfectly. "Seems a shame it'll be gone when the tide comes in."
The observation rips straight through you, and a version of you exists somewhere in the multiverse that kicks down the sculpture right there and then. However, this version of you whirls around to face this innocent bystander, tears already forming in your eyes. "I know, right?" you seethe, biting at him in agreement. "These things are so stupid, they never last! I'm always left alone with nothing."
"...You're very intense about this," the stranger says mildly.
His calm is infectious, like a perfect chemical reaction that counteracts your intensity until it's completely neutralised. The fury soothed down to a tired sort of grief. One you should have started feeling long ago, but never allowed inside your heart. "Sorry," you say, now embarrassed for your outburst.
"It's okay. Why do you keep making them then?"
Odd. No one has ever asked you that before. "I… I guess I hope one day the sand will finally remember," you say, feeling stupid the moment the words come out of your mouth. "It's silly, I know."
He chuckles, but there's no trace of mockery in his laugh. "A little naive perhaps, yeah. I don't think sand works like that," he says, his eyes crinkling as he smiles, giving you an endearing, liberal view of his gums. It’s a good smile, the kind that disarms people without meaning to. "Want to grab a drink instead?" he asks.
You consider him and his proposal, but it is just for show. You already know you're going to refuse him. He seems nice, but you’re not ready for… for whatever it is that he's offering. "Yeah, sure," you say.
Wait, what?
Well, no going back now.
So you have coffee with the odd beachgoer, whose name you learn is Yoongi. Coffee is where your meetings begin and end for a long time, until one day you have dinner together, and breakfast the morning after.
You do not stop making sand sculptures right away. Yoongi indulges you, learns over time to recognise when it is alright to joke about it. (You nearly break up for the first time over that.)
He does not replace your former love. The Taehyung-shaped hole in your heart still exists. It is just that Yoongi unknowingly encourages your heart to grow, to create a space for him where he can make a home by Taehyung's side, proving humanity's capacity to love is truly infinite.
When the unbidden urge to continue Taehyung’s work finally relaxes its hold on you, you feel guilty at first. You never did learn what aspect of the artform captivated him so. But some days you look down to see Yoongi's hand holding yours, long fingers entwined in yours with a tightness like he never means to let go–until the tides of time come in to wash away the moment, leaving nothing but a memory.
And then Yoongi holds your hand again, and again, and again. Each time a unique experience that never comes back in exactly the same way.
The sand never did remember, but you do. And that can be enough.