an: saw the desperate seatmate slowburn on tt and got inspiration (enough with the angst Rosa 😡)

The ocean stretched out before you both, a restless, breathing thing, its voice low and endless in the hush of twilight. The waves kissed the shore in slow, uneven rhythms, each retreat leaving behind thin veins of foam that dissolved into the sand like unsent messages. Above, the sky sagged heavy with deepening blue, the last scraps of daylight clinging stubbornly to the horizon.

The sea breeze wove around you and Rin like a ghost, cool and damp, carrying the briny tang of salt and the faint, sour scent of fading sun. It tousled your hair, caught on the folds of your clothes, pressed at the spaces between you. Too small to be strangers, too distant to be whole. The air seemed thick with a tension that clung like mist, soft but unshakable.

Neither of you moved, as if any shift, any sound, would snap the fragile thread that kept you tethered to this moment. Between you hung the weight of everything unsaid: the second guesses, the half-formed regrets, the things that once fit easily in your mouths but now felt too heavy to voice.

Somewhere further down the coast, a gull called out, its cry thin and lonely against the roaring hush of the sea. The sky grew darker by slow degrees, pulling shadows like a blanket over the shore. In the pause between waves, the silence throbbed—too full, too loud, crowded with the ghosts of what had been and the fragile hopes of what might still be salvaged. Too little said, too much unspoken.

The first words said were merely hypothetical. From you. Even so, their importance flared much more prominently than their form.

If you ever end up liking someone, do you think it’d be stupid and ridiculous if you get jealous over them constantly talking to another person? Like, someone who…threatens your feelings?

Rin can feel that underlying weight. But he can’t quite place it.

“That’s a weird question.”

I told you—it’s hypothetical.

His grip is stronger on the energy drink he holds.

“Tch. Jealousy is annoying.”

A pause.

“…But I wouldn’t call it stupid.”