(unedited, don't hurt me pls)

✧･ﾟ: * eleven *:･ﾟ✧

Madeline wakes up in a compromising position. She can feel a hard surface beneath her, though she's quite positive she had fallen asleep on the couch. Still trying to come to her senses, she frowns, stretching her arms up and then—

She hears a quiet groan as she practically punches Tae's cheek.

Then she feels his chest rise and fall with the deep breath he inhales.

Her eyes widen in a panic as she hurriedly sits upright, wondering how in the hell she managed to get situated against his side with her head on his chest when they both fell asleep at opposite ends of the couch the night prior. Madeline knows she's a clingy sleeper—she normally sleeps with a pillow on either side of her, and she's still quite fond of a stuffed tiger she received when she was younger―but she finds it hard to believe she personally rotated ninety degrees in her sleep.

Then again, when her grandmother was alive, the elder woman loved telling the story of the time Madeline spent the night with her, and somehow Madeline's feet ended up in her grandmother's face the next morning.

So she supposes it isn't so hard to believe after all.

But still.

Not only how, but why.

Tae shifts, striking Madeline back into reality. She scrambles off the couch, having to climb over his legs to do so, her hand accidentally pushing into his stomach. That causes him to wake up, since the punch to the face clearly hadn't done it, and he sits up right in time to watch Madeline fall to her butt on the floor.

"Wha—Maddie, are you okay?"

She feels his hands cups her elbows to help her stand. "Y-yeah, I'm fine."

"You look, uh, scared."

"No, I'm fine," she repeats. How embarrassing it would be to talk about. He doesn't even seem like he knows about the position the two were in, so she best keep her mouth shut about it.

"Okay... Are you... hungry?"

The two each take a shower, get dressed, then go downstairs to eat at the hotel's breakfast cafe. Tae doesn't know what majority of the food is, so she tells him to surprise her and simply hopes she likes it. They are in Venice after all, so she may as well venture out with her food choices as opposed to be picky like normal.

It turns out that most of the food are pastries, and there's orange juice and coffee as choices of drinks. Madeline is more than fine eating a bunch of sweets for breakfast, even if it does end up making her stomach her, but she hates coffee. She wouldn't mind the orange juice if they hadn't left the pulp in, the small bits being a texture disaster on her tongue. Tae buys her a water bottle from a vending machine instead, apologizing as if it were his fault she was difficult.

Madeline realizes Tae is being strangely quiet. He's normally fumbling through words, trying to tell her what the two will spend the day doing, or asking her random questions about the English language (he listened to an entire lesson during his shower this morning). But no. He's practically silent.

Her palms start sweating. Maybe he did realize the position they woke up in this morning. Maybe he's grossed out and trying to find a way to ditch her.

Ah, shit.

She's going to be stranded. In Venice. With no money. And blind.

Her death is near, she can feel it.

She nervously picks out what feels like a donut, or something roughly in the shape of one—doesn't matter what it is, honestly, because it tastes heavenly. She nibbles on her bottom lip before forcing herself to ask. "Are you okay?"

"Eh? Are you okay?"

"Y-yeah, I'm fine, but I'm asking you."

"I'm fine. Are you?"

She stifles an eye roll and laughs a little. "Yes, Tae, I'm fine. But you seem... upset, almost."

"Ah, no, no. I'm not upset. Are—?"

"Don't," she cuts him off. "I'm allowed to ask about you without you asking about me, okay?"

He's quiet.

"You don't have to worry about me," she reiterates, slowly.

"I worry," he says. "And... you... worry about me?"

"Yes," she answers without having to think, then mentally slaps herself for speaking so quickly. Her cheeks flush. "You shouldn't be upset on your own vacation."

"I just, uh..." He clicks his tongue as he thinks of the words. "I want... take you to, uh, Rome, okay?"

Her lips part in surprised. Is that why he's so quiet? Because of their conversation last night? She sighs, setting the pastry back on the plate.

"Tae, I told you it's okay."

"But you want—"

"I want you to do things that you want to do. I already missed the appointment anyways," she says, feeling a pang of sadness in her chest at the thought but she pushes the feeling away, keeping it from showing on her face. "It doesn't matter anymore."

It's quiet again. She wishes she could see his face, his reactions to things, instead of having to decipher the type of silence that settles between them. She decides he's simply contemplating what she said, so she takes a bite of her pastry.

Suddenly, someone comes up to their table. Madeline can sense them approaching, then she feels the presence of them practically right next to her. The person leans forward and speaks in broken English, "Come support our theater for a free show with the option of donations! The play of Romeo and Juliet starts in thirty minutes, right across the street!"

Then a piece of paper is laid in front of Madeline's hands, and she hears the person move on to the table behind them, repeating the same phrase.

She hears Tae gasp. "I know Romeo and Juliet!" he exclaims proudly, his accent undeniably adorable when pronouncing the names. She mentally slaps herself again. She shouldn't think about those things.

She supposes if someone doesn't know Romeo and Juliet, they've been living under a rock their entire life. She knows the story by heart since she once did a project on it back in middle school, before she lost her sight and loved to read. She wonders if the play will be in English. She doesn't expect it to be, and honestly, she suspects she could still follow it without seeing or understanding simply by the tones of their voices. That's how well she knows it.

"Oh," Tae murmurs, suddenly sounding defeated. "I for... got?"

She nods. "You forgot what?"

"You are blind. You can't see a play."

Then she feels indescribably guilty. He had been so excited about it two seconds ago. "That's okay," she responds. "We can still go. I know Romeo and Juliet really well."

"Really? You want to go?"

"Of course," she says. She really couldn't care less about it, but with Tae's enthusiasm, she'd feel terrible if she said otherwise. "Let's go."

So Madeline spends the next two hours genuinely enthralled in the play since it is in English, the theater wanting to draw the attention of tourists to obtain more donations for their building. Tae sits beside her, probably lost with the dialogue, but he gasps every now and then when a fight happens, or the set changes, or anything dramatic occurs.

She leans over to explain what's happening sometimes, and he leans over to her every now and then to tell her about the characters currently on the stage. He tries to describe them for her, but it kept ending in the both of them giggling because he had no idea what he was talking about. They go back and forth trying to explain to each other, one being the eyes while the other is the translator. It's a decent system. Not too efficient, but it gets them shushed a lot for laughing.

She really enjoyed it, and Tae seemed to as well, despite the language barrier.

Afterwards, Tae suggests walking around a park that's down the road from their hotel. Apparently, he has something planned for the evening, but he hasn't told her what it is. The park is to pass the time, she supposes. She doesn't mind.

She grown quite fond of walking around, holding his hand.

But she didn't just admit that.

She listens to him try and explain how he's on a break right now from his band, a rare sliver of time he gets to himself. The only reason he is by himself is because of the passing of his father, and his manager agreed that Tae should get time to himself to help cope. She picks that out of his jumbled words of: "I am... break... from, uh, BTS. Because my abeoji—sorry. Fa... father is, uh, gone. My b-boss? Yeah. He said I take my own break."

She'll admit he's gotten better already. He's been correcting himself rather than her cutting in to do it for him. She smiles despite herself. If he's this hardworking learning a language, she can only imagine how hard he works every day.

Tae suddenly shouts, "Oh!" making Madeline jump. "Flowers," he says, releasing her hand. She stands awkwardly while she listens to him walk a few steps down the sidewalk away from her. When he returns, he grabs her hand and places a stem in it.

"It's, uh... rose. It's for you."

https://youtu.be/9P_pC6A5Ix4

Her cheeks heat up, but she's positive it's just Tae being Tae. "Thank you," she mumbles. "What color is it?"

"White," he says proudly. "It's your favorite."

"You're right," she says with a grin.

He ends up picking more, telling her to be careful of "stabs," which she corrects him are thorns. He says he gets red roses too, but that he can't find sunflowers. She tells him they can find a florist some other time.

The further they walk into the park, there's suddenly music playing. Someone is playing a guitar and singing, which instantly grabs Tae's attention and he drags her over. The two sit on a bench, listening to the soft tone of the woman singing, the gentle strums on her guitar. It's very relaxing. So relaxing that Madeline nearly falls asleep sitting upright.

Until Tae gasps and says, "Dancing!"

This jerks her wide awake easily. "Huh?"

"They are dancing. We dance, okay? Let's go."

"Tae, I don't really—"

Too late.

He tugs her between a crowd of people. There's way more people here than she thought, and he was right about majority of them dancing, swaying to the sweet song. The woman is singing in what Madeline assumes is Italian, but that doesn't take away from the emotion of the song. Madeline actually gets chills when the woman hits a particularly beautiful note.

Madeline's face blushes a third time that day when she feels Tae's hands on her hips. She freezes for a moment, then runs her hands up his arms to find his shoulders, loosely draping her arms around them. This is how people do it in movies, right? She doesn't really remember. She feels so humiliated that she could jump off a cliff.

Tae told her he dances in his group, and she doesn't know if he can actually dance, or if he's one of those people who say they can but really look like those floppy air balloons. Either way, she bets he can dance better than her, so it's strangely intimidating to be doing this right now. Not to mention, she can't see Tae's expression. She doesn't know how he's reacting to any of this, and that terrifies her more.

What if she screws something up?

It's just swaying, she tries to tell herself, but she realizes it's not about the dancing, per se. It's about who's she's dancing with.

And she's never really felt like this before; so cautious of her movements, so worried about his reactions, so embarrassed by the littlest things, so paranoid she's ruining his trip by tagging along. She's never cared so much about what someone thinks of her, and honestly...

It pisses her off.

She misses being able to make mistakes as a blind person and not give a damn about it because she's blind. But with Tae, she feels like she should tread more carefully, think things through more thoroughly. She doesn't know why. He knows she's blind. He doesn't care.

But she does.

She cares because he's already tried to change things in his schedule just because she can't participate in them like a normal person. She cares because he's trying to hard to paint her mental images that she doesn't think he's really absorbing them for himself. She cares because it feels like she's taken up all of his attention when he should be enjoying his break.

The more she thinks about all of it, the more guilty she feels. She doesn't even realize her eyes are watering until Tae abruptly stops moving, cupping her cheeks.

"Maddie? What's wrong? I'm sorry. I... not have made you dance. You don't like it. I'm sorry. Don't cry."

She laughs, grabbing his wrists. He's actually blaming himself. Another reason to feel guilty. "It's not your fault. I'm fine."

"But... you're crying."

"People cry," she says, trying to shrug it off. "It's okay."

He's quiet a moment, his thumb gingerly swiping a tear off her cheek. She closes her eyes at the action. God, this is ridiculous.

"Promise?" he asks quietly.

"I promise." Her smile doesn't feel convincing, so she can only hope he believes it nonetheless.

"You want to leave?" he asks.

"No," she forces herself to say, pulling his hands down from her face despite enjoying the feel of his palms on her cheeks. "Let's dance." Because Tae wanted to dance. Because he was excited and she ruined it.

Tae hesitates, but eventually his hands meet her hips again, and Madeline tries to be more involved. It turns out to be decently enjoyable. Maybe because Tae laughs whenever she steps on his foot instead of getting angry with her. They aren't really dancing to the beat anymore, but neither of them mind.

He's laughing. She's laughing. And for now that makes everything okay.