It’s a young couple that walks out of the hotel later, her hair hidden under a colorful scarf and his eyes obscured with thick lenses. She exhales as they make a leisurely getaway (leisurely if you can – because those who chase will go after those who run as a general rule) and then makes a show of blushing and ducking her head as he pauses to buy and hand her a ready-made bouquet of sunflowers from a street-stall.
The two of them walk into the night and she sees some truth to what he had told her the night he had met, as she holds the bouquet in one hand, his arm in the other, and feels the warm comforting weight of the necklace against her neck and shoulders.
It should have ended with them tumbling into her bed at the hotel. But no, it ends with him leaving her at the bar after they get their things from the hotel.
She offers one for the road and he accepts. They watch the silent bartender bring out Calvados and Benedictine and Cointreau and lemons. There is remarkable economy of movement in the juicing of the lemons and the cutting of the peel into long swathes that are kissed by the brief flame of a match, sending the hot citrus smell of a summary memory briefly into the air.
The two of them drink the sweet gold cocktail in silence and Natalya ponders killing the otherwise flawless bartender for the sheer cheek. But it is a quite good drink – sweet and complex and soothing to palate and soul – and she knows that it is just not worth it, not in this moment, not in this place. So she sits in stoic silence instead, ignoring the two men in the bar. This time, there is music – something low and melancholy sung by a woman with a fragile voice.
His cheeks faintly flushed, Yong Soo reaches out just shy of touching her unbound hair and when she doesn’t show that she’s going to knife him, he touches the long strands and kisses the ends chastely but affectionately. Then with that bright boyish smile, he heads out the door, pausing for a moment to put on his jacket and perhaps catch her eye for one last time. She doesn’t look back at him and the door quietly swings shut.
Natalya stays at the bar for a while with the cocktail she never finishes and a cigarette she smokes as if it had personally offended her. She leaves a ¥10000 note for the bartender and goes out to hail a cab, leaving the paper wrapped sunflowers on the bar.
As soon as she lands in Minsk the next day, she receives a text in English from him from the temporary phone she hasn’t had time (or possibly the inclination) to wipe and dump.
txt bk, k? <3
She does text back.
Bye.
Natalya destroys the phone a week later and she will always deny that her fingers trembled as she does so.
((ooc: Belarus’s leather cuff bangles – actual jewelry! http://www.ahalife.com/product/3046/leather-handcuffs Though there are variations, the cocktail they drink together is called a “Honeymoon.” You can replace the Calvados (apple brandy) with mead (fermented honey liquor). And if the mention of “honey” seems familiar… the origin of the term “honeymoon” has been suggested to refer to a Babylonian tradition that the bride’s father pays to the couple enough honey wine to last a month. Please note that it is a mostly unsubstantiated claim. I have no real song in mind for what was playing at the bar but I would suggest Billie Holiday, who I find has a charming fragility and alluring melancholy to her voice. As of current exchange rates - ¥10000 = US $101.48. As a general rule, I tend to just push the decimal places two places to the left to do a rough conversion from yen to dollars.))
Good! Bittersweet was exactly what I was looking for - without killing either or both of them off in the process (don't think that I didn't contemplate it at one point though).
Writing Natalya was oddly fun - someone who is brusque, business-like but strangely attracted to lovely things (and the meanings of those lovely things).
i have no coherent words for this, only delighted cooing. this pairing thrills me, as much for the contrast of the characters involved as for its rarity, and to see it presented in such an enigmatically beautiful style was wonderful. author, you have such a grasp on coloring a situation with a character's perspective; the detached narration fit in so, so well with natalya's demeanor, and the way that you cast yong-soo in this scenario was masterful (especially given that for a lot of authors, he seems to be a difficult character to balance and pin down well).
i sincerely hope that you're still writing, especially here on the kink meme, and i hope doubly that you'll visit these characters again. thanks so much for sharing your skills.
OP here! Oh my god. Yes. Thank you, thank you, thank you! I'm so sorry it took so long for me to find this again, but yes, that was worth it. I love the way Natalya knows she has to move on, but still, it was so bittersweet, I nearly cried. Thank you for making my day (and week, it looks like)!
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Bitter Honey [3b/3]
(Anonymous) 2013-10-20 12:22 am (UTC)(link)The two of them walk into the night and she sees some truth to what he had told her the night he had met, as she holds the bouquet in one hand, his arm in the other, and feels the warm comforting weight of the necklace against her neck and shoulders.
It should have ended with them tumbling into her bed at the hotel. But no, it ends with him leaving her at the bar after they get their things from the hotel.
She offers one for the road and he accepts. They watch the silent bartender bring out Calvados and Benedictine and Cointreau and lemons. There is remarkable economy of movement in the juicing of the lemons and the cutting of the peel into long swathes that are kissed by the brief flame of a match, sending the hot citrus smell of a summary memory briefly into the air.
The two of them drink the sweet gold cocktail in silence and Natalya ponders killing the otherwise flawless bartender for the sheer cheek. But it is a quite good drink – sweet and complex and soothing to palate and soul – and she knows that it is just not worth it, not in this moment, not in this place. So she sits in stoic silence instead, ignoring the two men in the bar. This time, there is music – something low and melancholy sung by a woman with a fragile voice.
His cheeks faintly flushed, Yong Soo reaches out just shy of touching her unbound hair and when she doesn’t show that she’s going to knife him, he touches the long strands and kisses the ends chastely but affectionately. Then with that bright boyish smile, he heads out the door, pausing for a moment to put on his jacket and perhaps catch her eye for one last time. She doesn’t look back at him and the door quietly swings shut.
Natalya stays at the bar for a while with the cocktail she never finishes and a cigarette she smokes as if it had personally offended her. She leaves a ¥10000 note for the bartender and goes out to hail a cab, leaving the paper wrapped sunflowers on the bar.
As soon as she lands in Minsk the next day, she receives a text in English from him from the temporary phone she hasn’t had time (or possibly the inclination) to wipe and dump.
txt bk, k? <3
She does text back.
Bye.
Natalya destroys the phone a week later and she will always deny that her fingers trembled as she does so.
((ooc:
Belarus’s leather cuff bangles – actual jewelry! http://www.ahalife.com/product/3046/leather-handcuffs
Though there are variations, the cocktail they drink together is called a “Honeymoon.” You can replace the Calvados (apple brandy) with mead (fermented honey liquor). And if the mention of “honey” seems familiar… the origin of the term “honeymoon” has been suggested to refer to a Babylonian tradition that the bride’s father pays to the couple enough honey wine to last a month. Please note that it is a mostly unsubstantiated claim.
I have no real song in mind for what was playing at the bar but I would suggest Billie Holiday, who I find has a charming fragility and alluring melancholy to her voice.
As of current exchange rates - ¥10000 = US $101.48. As a general rule, I tend to just push the decimal places two places to the left to do a rough conversion from yen to dollars.))
Re: Bitter Honey [3b/3]
(Anonymous) 2013-10-20 01:22 am (UTC)(link)Your writing style is so oddly hypnotizing, too, if you don't mind me saying. It's oddly detached and clinical, but yet powerful.
I liked it. Thank you for gracing us with this fill!
Author
(Anonymous) 2013-10-20 02:07 am (UTC)(link)Writing Natalya was oddly fun - someone who is brusque, business-like but strangely attracted to lovely things (and the meanings of those lovely things).
I'm glad you enjoyed it
Re: Bitter Honey [3b/3]
(Anonymous) 2013-12-22 09:44 pm (UTC)(link)i have no coherent words for this, only delighted cooing. this pairing thrills me, as much for the contrast of the characters involved as for its rarity, and to see it presented in such an enigmatically beautiful style was wonderful. author, you have such a grasp on coloring a situation with a character's perspective; the detached narration fit in so, so well with natalya's demeanor, and the way that you cast yong-soo in this scenario was masterful (especially given that for a lot of authors, he seems to be a difficult character to balance and pin down well).
i sincerely hope that you're still writing, especially here on the kink meme, and i hope doubly that you'll visit these characters again. thanks so much for sharing your skills.
Re: Bitter Honey [3b/3]
(Anonymous) 2014-01-23 02:05 am (UTC)(link)Oh my god. Yes. Thank you, thank you, thank you! I'm so sorry it took so long for me to find this again, but yes, that was worth it.
I love the way Natalya knows she has to move on, but still, it was so bittersweet, I nearly cried. Thank you for making my day (and week, it looks like)!