There are a lot of stories where at the end of it the love interest’s last words to the protagonist are a love confession. But it’s always “I love you” or a variant of it. But what about:
“I love you too.”, their love breathed with one last broken smile, before their body lost all its tension and with it all life. The protagonist barley took notice of how they basically collapsed onto their love, how their fat tears ruined the others shirt. Not that it mattered. Not anymore. No.
The only thing they really took notice of, were the last words, screaming at them, begging for attention from seemingly ever last corner of their mind.
‘I love you’ ‘I love you’ ‘I love you’ ‘I love you’ ‘I love you’ ‘I love you’ ‘I love you’ ‘I love you’ ‘I love you’
No. That wasn’t quite right though, now was it? No. There was this last, tiny, seemingly unnecessary word at the end.
‘Too.’
‘I. Love. You. Too.’
‘I love you. Too.’
‘I love you too.’
Yes; that’s what they had said. Meaning…. they had known. They had known, all this time and they never said anything, why didn’t they say anything, we could’ve been- weren’t we- maybe if we- NO- nonononono
Pictures of unlived moments that were never meant to be, flooded their mind; seconds of memories passed by long ago, burning their eyes. And that last sentence, screaming, begging. Too much. It was all to much. But it all ended in a single question:
A is told before arrival that they have to share not only a room but also a bed with the worst person they’ve ever had the displeasure of having met and even to work with: B.
Torn between anger and anxiousness they await the evening, hoping to get this over with as soon as possible.
Luckily, B meets an old friend C in the dinner hall and promptly decides to sleep in their room instead! That’s amazing news! Isn’t it?
Then why was the thought of B hating them so much they’d jump ship at the first instance so…. Disturbing? Why can’t A stop thinking about what B and C might be doing? Why can’t they stop thinking of the happiness and relief in Bs eyes, the moment they saw C and how they have never looked at A in any way NEAR that ?
It’s not like THEY care about B… B is just not allowed to dislike A !!
The hero has had a couple days off now, both their day AND night job is they finally felt save to meet their friends friend! They have heard so much about them now, they just know they’ll all be a happy family in no time. But when the other friend arrives … well let’s just say, the hero has to unpack their acting skills once more.
Later they excuse themselves to get another drink:
Hero, hissing: What the hell are you doing here ? Have you stooped so low you’re playing my friends now!?
Villain, hissing back just as venomous: YOUR friends?!? Excuse you? They are MY friends?! And how do I know YOU’RE not the one PLAYING ME?!
Hero, flabbergasted: WHAT?! Why would I risk the life these wonderful friends just to get back on YOU of all people?!
Villain: WHY THE HELL SHOULD I?!
Both stare at each other in shock, realisation hitting them equally hard: either one of them has to go right now and never talk to their friends ever again OR they have to play pretend and get along, only hating each other in secret.
Continuation: they constantly try to out do each other as the groups best friend. “I brought homemade muffins to the picnic!” “Oh? Well and I organised the picnic in the first place, villain!”
Bonus: the friends figured out beforehand of each of their identity and set them up to both have a bigger family and save the town. And when their fight for the group started they placed bets and are popcorn watching them being “secretive”
A: Oh, nothing. You’re just not exactly known for caring about people you don’t like, or think are stupid, or get on your nerves etc. So yeah… figured you wouldn’t remember me.
B: What is THAT supposed to mean, huh?! Don’t you remember we did that thing together!?
A: I remember YOU constantly criticising my every move, YEAH! OF COURSE I REMEMBER ?! But not YOU ever CARING ABOUT ME?!?
B: THAT’S LITERALLY WHAT I SAID?!?
A:NO, IT’S NOT?!
B: WHY WOULD I GIVE SOMEONE ADVICE TO DO BETTER IF I DONT CARE ABOUT THEM , HUH?!?
Laying there, pulling the god just a little closer to their chest, they wondered: What is worse?
Finally having someone who doesn’t only tolerates you, genuinely likes you even but knowing the gods heart will still always belong to someone else ? Knowing that once more you’re not enough ?
Or knowing that even a god can’t help you forget your own heart? Will never be able to compare to them ? That if even a god can’t make you fall in love with someone new, you won’t ever move on from your own love?
Or perhaps what’s worse about this all is the realisation of a fact? A fact you never wanted to know, even in your most curious moments:
B: With C it was just some fun time, meaningless, to blow off some steam and tension. Considering I actually love you of COURSE it was better, you moron!
A: Oh so what you ACTUALLY mean by that is that I’m shit but it’s okay? Is that it ? Huh ? Tell me! Cause I have you know: NO ONE has ever complained! In fact they they have praised me! And YOU say it’s only cause you lo-
This was an unabashed gift to self. I hope that in sharing it, it’s also a gift to all you wonderful people too.
2021 was such a goddamn year. It held a lot of firsts for me.
I am lucky in so many, many ways, and one of them was becoming honest about what I like, and doubling-down in those areas. Digging into the social side of the world of fandom was one of those positive things I accomplished, and I couldn’t be happier.
To celebrate the year in which I finished the story that reintroduced me to fandom, I commissioned one piece by the wonderful @mad1492. When she sent the sketches for two options, my heart overflowed, and I asked for both.
Wishing everyone a wonderful new year. I’m glad to be done with the past, and look forward to a future where we continue to treat each other with kindness
“I’ve never been in here before,” Harry said, “but what I do know is that these plants weren’t here before. They shot up sometime recently and didn’t stop growing all winter. They seem benign, even considering all the spikes—”
“They’re tea roses,” Draco interrupted him. He looked up, lit by the blue-white light of the dying day, awe in his eyes.
“Roses? Really?”
Draco nodded, lips smashed together.
“Yes.Tea roses, specifically. They’re fragrant, all colours, and they kind of,” he circled a finger tightly, “spiral out from the centre. The more you cut them back, the higher they grow. It’s the wrong season for them, but you said they just appeared?”
“Mmhmm,” Harry sidled behind Draco, whose outstretched hand brushed against a branch, fingertip light against a thorn the size of his pinky nail. “I do know them, actually. There was a bush my aunt made me hack down and rip out. It never bloomed for her.”
“These are two stories high, already,” Draco gasped. “They’ll be so beautiful when they bloom. These will, for us. You can see the buds pushing in already—see?”
Something became clear for Harry, the reverential way that Draco spoke about them. He hugged him closely from behind, soaking in his scent, sending hot breath down his collar as he settled his chin on his shoulder.
“They’re your favourite, aren’t they?”
Draco didn’t say anything, but Harry thought that had more to do with tightness in his throat than for lack of wanting.
“I think these are for you,” he whispered into his ear. “The house must have missed you while you were away. I know I missed you.”
“If you say something corny to me about moving in and putting down roots, I’ll sock you directly in the bollocks,” Draco drawled, so Harry only tugged him closer and smiled, thinking of tea, and futures filled with gifts fit for princes.
I was listening to this song after a 1-day writing break, and I got this idea and couldn’t not. Also inspired by @tackytigerfic’sOur Little Life which lives rent-free in my mind always <3
The Lesson
Drarry | Rated M | CW - grief, MCD-ish, suicide | 192 words
So moving, taut, and enthralling - p1nk has captured the epic sweeping feel of a classical tragedy in under 200 words. Go forth and luxuriate in this little beauty!
100k into my current WIP and having a crisis as it just occurred to me that maybe none of it makes sense… talking myself down very gently but it means i can’t post the latest bit i wrote in case i find myself spiralling further into confusion so here’s a snip from an older extract i’m just about to edit!
Wartime AU, Voldemort still knocking about, Wolfstar lives, Draco deserted the Order and then came back. Harry has just returned from multiverse-travelling and accidentally brought a Malfoy from another universe with him, who’s been telling them all about his world.
“I can’t believe everyone just left him to die!”
Sirius was in a rage, prowling restlessly around the room, black hair gleaming in the shivering light from the sconces.
“Dumbledore—yeah, I mean, I can see that,” Ron said consideringly. “But there’s no way our Sirius or Remus would have ever let Harry die. Your versions must be absolute incompetents,” he said, looking at Remus and Sirius. “No offence.”
Remus rolled his eyes.
“Not to dwell too much on my equivalent’s shortcomings,” he said to the other Malfoy, “but how could they have been so careless? Albus, yes, I can see that. He always wasambitious when it came to Harry. But if our world is so close to yours, I just can’t imagine how…” His eyes flickered momentarily, and Harry realised that other Malfoy had flinched the tiniest bit. Remus, wolf-sharp, had noticed of course. “Oh. Oh.”
“Oh, what?” Sirius said crossly. “There’s no ohabout it, Moons. If they let Albus talk their Harry into walking to a certain death before he’d even finished school then we should take Malfoy’s Time-Trip thing and go and kick their arses ourselves.”
“To be fair to other me,” Harry said. “It does sound like the sort of thing I might do.”
“Which is exactly why Moony and I keep you on the straight and narrow,” Sirius told him, grabbing his hand. Sirius was a bit too thin, always, from the nervous prowl of him and the long nights of no sleep and the hunt. His fingers slipped around Harry’s smoothly, tight at the knuckles, ropey with tendons as he clutched harder.
“Pads,” Remus said quietly. “I think what the other Malfoy is trying to tell us is that, in his world, we’re—what, both of us?” He eyed other Malfoy, who nodded. “We’re dead, I think.”
“You went first,” other Malfoy said to Sirius, “which is what started it all for my Harry. And then you—” Remus sat back heavily in his chair “—went and got yourself killed in the battle, and you two—” he stabbed a finger accusingly at Ron and Hermione “—weren’t even around when he decided, like a twat, to trot off into Voldemort’s camp and thus face certain death. Anyone with a modicum of sense would have known he’d do something epically foolish, and yet…” He spread his hands out dismissively, and settled back into his chair, shoulders relaxed, spine soft.
He was, Harry realised, enjoying himself, the bright eyes of an adventurer. Sirius’s fingers twitched in Harry’s grip, nose wrinkled in irritation as he listened to other Malfoy. Across the room, real Malfoy was watching, eyes flat as they lingered on his-face-but-not. He looked paler than usual, though it might just have been the contrast with other Malfoy and that red, red thread of scarring that tugged his lips into a smile and threw the line of his cheekbone into sharp relief.
We’re walking in sync, our hands touching gently where we keep them close to each other’s but not holding them yet. You’re not affected by the cold but I’m shivering, and your honest gaze and soft smile do the job my sweater couldn’t do: keep me warm.
I scruff my shoe at the wrappers that adorn the roads, glance at the walls that are caked black with dust, inhale the air that seems heavy with smoke, and I smile. I think, I’ve never found Delhi as beautiful as I did that day, with you.
I met you in December, when the cold gets bitter, the sky turns murky, the flowers lay bare.
In this city’s winter where you don’t feel cold, armed by the chill of where you come from. You tell me, back at home, you wake up to your green hills covered in the shein of pearly snow. I shiver at the thought, burying my hands in the depths of my pockets. You link your arm with mine, our pointy elbows keeping me cosy to my roots.
We talk about the weather without the conversation feeling barren. It’s chilly, it’s important. We have an excuse to walk closer among the bustling crowds, our hands almost always brushing each other’s, seeking warmth I haven’t yet found in my life.
In this grey cold we wear pink, purple, and orange hoodies, bright from the head to toe. That must be the reason why my vision tunnels when I look at you, the damp surroundings falling away till it’s just you and your brightness. You’re always in my periphery, bobbing around like a colourful minion. And if you carefully adjust my hoodie on my head, it’s because the wind has been hitting my face for a while, not because you want every wholesome excuse to get closer to me. If I lean my head on your shoulder sitting in an auto, yes it’s because I’m cold, not because I like the way it feels. The day feels short because the sunlight hides face at mere 5:30 in the evening, not because we don’t want to go home even after six long hours of dance practice. If I scoot an inch closer to you sitting on a bench, it’s because that’s where the sunlight is filtering through the trees, not because you feel like sunshine more than actual sunshine.
I’ve always liked winters. Winter with it’s erratic rain, and blue fingers, but this winter isn’t bitter, it’s the sweetest time of my life. This time around when I can just hold someone’s hand when my hand is starting to freeze. When I can hug someone before we part ways, gathering the warmth from his sweater and taking it with me in the metro. When I can hit him playfully after a dumb joke and he won’t feel a thing other than the touch of my fists through the layers of his clothing. When we can pretend to be sipping on our scalding tea because we don’t want to go home yet. When we can make plans to meet up and it not being weird because it’s Christmas, and a day after Christmas, and then it’s going to be New year’s eve, and the the New Year’s day. What can we say, it’s the holiday season. We can walk arm in arm in the crowded tourist places, no, not because I’ve taken a fondness for you and your lameass jokes. Not because you look at me like you’ve known me all your life. Not because we feel this certain sense of psynergy between us. No, none of these make sense. It’s simply because it gets a little cold around here, these days.
I like the cold side of the pillows, the cool coloured covers of my bitter wooded bed, not marred by the heat of another presence. I like the clean floors of my water-smelling bedroom, dusted only by my footsteps and no one else’s. I like the whole tubs of ice creams that I eat by myself, without the digging marks of a second steel spoon. The perspiration of my once icy water bottle that slips onto my study table and seeps onto the fluttering, unhurried notes. I like the detergent washed clothes that become crisp in the sun and still smell like dew. The chill of things untouched by someone else.
In my own space of one, it’s often cold but never lonely. It’s the cold that solitude brings with itself, a wise sort of scent that wafts of lessons and slow realisations.
Oh to have a writer fall in love with me so they could write poems about me, romanticise my imperfections, fill drafts upon drafts with affection, and call them fictional bullshit, like I do
It must be wonderful. And beautiful, truly breathtaking. To live in a cottage somewhere, on a beach or maybe the hills, anywhere with an open, clean sky. A cat curled up in my lap, or perhaps a dog that rests it’s chin on my foot. I have walls and walls of mounted books and a rickety ladder to reach them. And someone to hold that rickety ladder steady, so I don’t fall and break my neck. To have a person of my own, a lover, who brings me warm milk when I’m too immersed in a book. Someone I can pour all my love onto, rain it upon him, engulf him, because that’s what i believe i am made to do. I am made to love. To be loved. i have so much of it, in excess really, it’s too much, pouring out and out of my being for someone i haven’t even met yet. i exist to spread love, and experience love, dive in it, submerge in it, drown in it, and when i come up for air i breathe love and exhale love and inhale love. That’s what my existence revolves around, that’s what humanity revolves around, and i want quiet hugs and someone i can loop my arm with and someone who will kiss the top of my head and make me fall asleep when i write into the crack of morning. At dusk when we get off work, we take a detour in the little car that we own and for reasons unknown end up somehwere on a rooftop and it’s perfect because he has a guitar or a ukelele or a goddamn french horn because i really wouldn’t care because all music is music and all music is feelings and all music for us would just be love. And maybe I’d start humming in the awful way i do, and it’s not perfect, not his notes and certainly not mine, but it is what it is, and what it is: is love. i want steamy coffees that are too bitter to drink and chocolate cakes that have spoonfuls missing from the sides, a messy kitchen countertop covered in flour which i joke to be cocaine and someone laughs and flicks me on the forehead and we go sleep under the same covers, a cat purring at my feet or perhaps a dog at the foot of the bed waiting for attention. It’s all love, and that’s what I’m born to do and feel and give and take.
It’s all love and it’s all that is worth in this world, in this life, in this heart. It is all that the universe has to offer, take it.
