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The Complete Fic Directory
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In My Veins
We are two people who found each other on the understanding that nothing is permanent. There was a recognition of darkness shared between us, an unspoken understanding that, in life, nothing can be planned or controlled. And nothing stays the same. Plans fall apart. People say goodbye. We shared the revelation that change is constant and indiscriminate and together made a silent pact to stop trying to hold onto all the things that were being blown away. You told me all the people you had relied on at one time or another, listed the many ways they had let you down and fallen away. And in listening to you, in being with you so closely and so often, I began to realise that perfection is entirely tied up in imperfection. The shadows under your eyes were part of your beauty. The world has kicked pieces out of you but I have always loved you for that. The incomplete, forever damaged way your eyes turn downward in thought. I learnt out of your imperfections exactly who you were and exactly what you wanted.
Perfection, to you, is someone who stays. But neither you nor I are perfect. We have both left. And we have both blamed everyone else for it. Maybe it was their fault. Maybe it was our fault for misconstruing ‘staying’. Perhaps ‘staying’ isn’t so simple as never leaving. Perhaps ‘staying’ is something bigger than that, something more like ‘always coming back’. And we have always come back to each other.
You became very good at pretending to breathe. The more you pretended the more the doubts and the insecurities were forgotten – because you are full of doubts and insecurities at all times – and something altogether more shallow could take hold. An insubstantial contentedness to live life through. You would put it up in the morning and try and keep it there. But the doubts would find you. The insecurities would break through and the doubts would creep up and you’d end up at my door, in my arms. Although, for all the frailty of your frame, it is you who is the strong one of the two of us. That’s why holding you is important to me; you trust me to still see you as strong even after seeing you break. And mine are the only arms you trust to hold you together. Whatever theories we share about transience and change, we have never doubted that each will be there for the other. Or at least, you never have.
Everything breaks eventually. Isn’t that the rock we pulled each other on to when the world was falling apart? The certainty that everything falls apart. Plans are rarely kept. Important plans? Never. And although people will say goodbye in their own ways, their own unique ways filled with love and good memories...goodbye is still goodbye. It’s still an ending. And it’s still another person leaving. I suppose, knowing that it is on this understanding that I first touched your heart with my own, I should find it easy accept why you always feel the need to disappear. You come and you go and you flit and you wander. You travel and trek and rarely write. You don’t answer your phone to me and move house without saying. You tell no one because you pretend no one but you exists. If people never existed, then you would never become attached to them, you would never give them the power to break you. It’s how you survive, for a while. Until the realisation that they did exist and you loved them catches up with you, finding you breathless and crying, and, to your credit, you will surrender immediately then. And you will pick up your phone. It is my number, of all the numbers you have dialled over the years, that is memorised so well your fingertips know it better than your head. Which is good, because your head is such a mess. Your words, not mine.
Every love you have had has been an impressive construction. Each love unique and yet each still uniquely you. Each one hand-made and carefully chosen. Each one a thing of beauty. Each one destroyed or damaged or torn. You have loved with time and care and then been let down every time. Of that much I am aware. Both of us have made the mistake of setting ourselves up for every fall. And we have, sadly, only learned from the mistake in time to meet each other. We are possibly the only people who would not let each other down.
Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking. Because I know I have let a lot of people down in my time, through stupidity mostly and never out of malice. But I would make the effort for you. I would put you above them all. If I had to. But I don’t. Because we are nothing to each other. We kiss, we hold, we fight and we break. But we are nothing. We’re just two people who happen to understand that, in order for ‘Hello’ to make sense, ‘Goodbye’ must be inevitable. In order for love to be real, loss must be real too. And that surely must be true, because love and loss exist together in my heart every time I touch you. At once my world is splendid and desolate as I feel you there and know you won’t be there for very much longer. You’re never anywhere for very long.
There’s something to be said for running away. I understand why you do it. I think it’s brave. In some ways I think it’s braver than staying. To just uproot, to fling yourself headfirst into the unknown. I stick things out. I stay put because I dread getting lost. You relish getting lost. You use it as an excuse to change direction at will. Or turn it into a roundabout route home. If you come back this time, which you will, like you have all the times before, I will still be standing in the same spot. I will not have discovered anything, I will not have conquered anything and I will not have got lost. I will still be where you left me. I’m scared to go anywhere else.
It does hurt to stand still and watch you go though. You still expect that of me every time. And yet I can’t really begrudge you the leaving somehow. Because you give me everything when you are here. You give everyone everything you have until there’s very little left for yourself. I think that’s part of why you have to go. You have to recover. For all your acceptance that people let you down, you never even consider the possibility of letting them down first. You wait until they’re ready to leave you and in the meantime they have everything you have to give. But I know you give me more than any of them. You don’t just give me all your effort or your energy or your time. You give me everything that is you. You hand it over to me, with a fearful look in your eyes but a strange trust nonetheless. From the moment you realised I was as broken as you were, you knew you had to give me your whole soul, you whole body. And you gave both, willingly. You were resigned to the fact that our shared distrust in certainties had created a certainty in itself. I doubt the irony was lost on you. The two people who believe nothing is certain can always be certain of each other’s company. But still you left and I cursed you for it. You left for some other country or continent or galaxy and I cursed you up and down. I demanded answers from your silence. Are you missing me whilst you’re out there finding yourself? Finding yourself. God, what a fucking cliché. You didn’t find yourself. And you never will by leaving. You are too wrapped up in me to be able to find yourself anywhere else. Somewhere in that head of yours – that heart of yours – you know that. And it scares you to death. You leave because nothing stays the same. Or at least, it isn’t supposed to. You leave because our own rules tell you I can’t still love you. Just like all the other people you loved have said goodbye I will too. So you beat me to the punch, I guess. Over and over again you beat me to the punch. I can’t break you if you’re not there, right?
You always come back though. You make no promises that this will be the last time because you don’t want to have to break them. We’ve both had enough of broken promises from the rest of the world, we don’t need them from each other. At first I was just grateful that you were back. Ever-so-slightly in awe of the fact I was enough to make you defy your own rules. Coz the whole Second Chance thing wasn’t something you did often. You tried it once, a long time ago, with someone who must have undervalued you greatly because they broke you again swiftly after. For some reason I’m worth the risk though, over and over and over again. Call it gravity, call it inevitable, call it what you will. But you will always end up back here. Pulling at me and crying and scratching your fingertips across my jawline.
And I know you love me.
You let that much slip. When you were trying to let go of my hand, as we kissed, you whispered it as if the words themselves might break. You said it because you couldn’t not say it any more. You needed to tell me what I already knew because you wanted to prove to me that this wasn’t really you saying goodbye. This was you saying you can’t cope right now. Saying that you had to disappear for a while. Some sort of punishment for yourself for not learning the lesson that things move. People change. The world turns around. If you close your eyes and pause long enough, you can almost feel it turn. But just imagine, if you close your eyes and hold your breath long enough you can feel something entirely opposite; you can feel me still holding onto you.
The thing is that, by some wrong turning or accidental fall, you clambered into me. You became so much a part of who I am that you became some sort of life force within me. You’re in my veins, so to speak. You have become part of my life in way that is wholly and entirely unchangeable because I cannot get you out. And I have tried, Jay. I have attempted it. I’ve tried to separate it all. Every time you fight me and every time you disappear. But it is still you that I taste on my lips, you that I can hear just beneath my own breathing. I cannot get you out. I cannot do it.
Everything gets dark inside your head. Because you can’t see that there can be any exception to the rule. Things break. People break. Love breaks. You can’t take it. Loving me, being loved by me, I’m not sure which. You can’t handle the pressure of being wrapped up in someone else, because that gives them control. You need control for your sanity. No matter how much you trust me not to use it, the potential is still there for destruction. The potential alone destroys you.
But I know you can feel that one spot of sunlight, the sliver of warmth on your face as you catch that first glimpse of me when you come back – because you always come back – and you see that I have neither moved nor broken. And I never will, I promise you (for what the promise is worth.)
Especially not if you stay.
And I don’t mean ‘stay’ in the sense of me always being tied up in you.
And I don’t mean ‘stay’ as in always coming back to me when you’re done disappearing.
I mean stay.
Stay like a blind leap into certainty, stay like you are living your whole life with your eyes closed and feeling my hand in yours.
Stay like I’m in your veins.
Or...you know...just...stay here.
With me.
Perfection, to you, is someone who stays. But neither you nor I are perfect. We have both left. And we have both blamed everyone else for it. Maybe it was their fault. Maybe it was our fault for misconstruing ‘staying’. Perhaps ‘staying’ isn’t so simple as never leaving. Perhaps ‘staying’ is something bigger than that, something more like ‘always coming back’. And we have always come back to each other.
You became very good at pretending to breathe. The more you pretended the more the doubts and the insecurities were forgotten – because you are full of doubts and insecurities at all times – and something altogether more shallow could take hold. An insubstantial contentedness to live life through. You would put it up in the morning and try and keep it there. But the doubts would find you. The insecurities would break through and the doubts would creep up and you’d end up at my door, in my arms. Although, for all the frailty of your frame, it is you who is the strong one of the two of us. That’s why holding you is important to me; you trust me to still see you as strong even after seeing you break. And mine are the only arms you trust to hold you together. Whatever theories we share about transience and change, we have never doubted that each will be there for the other. Or at least, you never have.
Everything breaks eventually. Isn’t that the rock we pulled each other on to when the world was falling apart? The certainty that everything falls apart. Plans are rarely kept. Important plans? Never. And although people will say goodbye in their own ways, their own unique ways filled with love and good memories...goodbye is still goodbye. It’s still an ending. And it’s still another person leaving. I suppose, knowing that it is on this understanding that I first touched your heart with my own, I should find it easy accept why you always feel the need to disappear. You come and you go and you flit and you wander. You travel and trek and rarely write. You don’t answer your phone to me and move house without saying. You tell no one because you pretend no one but you exists. If people never existed, then you would never become attached to them, you would never give them the power to break you. It’s how you survive, for a while. Until the realisation that they did exist and you loved them catches up with you, finding you breathless and crying, and, to your credit, you will surrender immediately then. And you will pick up your phone. It is my number, of all the numbers you have dialled over the years, that is memorised so well your fingertips know it better than your head. Which is good, because your head is such a mess. Your words, not mine.
Every love you have had has been an impressive construction. Each love unique and yet each still uniquely you. Each one hand-made and carefully chosen. Each one a thing of beauty. Each one destroyed or damaged or torn. You have loved with time and care and then been let down every time. Of that much I am aware. Both of us have made the mistake of setting ourselves up for every fall. And we have, sadly, only learned from the mistake in time to meet each other. We are possibly the only people who would not let each other down.
Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking. Because I know I have let a lot of people down in my time, through stupidity mostly and never out of malice. But I would make the effort for you. I would put you above them all. If I had to. But I don’t. Because we are nothing to each other. We kiss, we hold, we fight and we break. But we are nothing. We’re just two people who happen to understand that, in order for ‘Hello’ to make sense, ‘Goodbye’ must be inevitable. In order for love to be real, loss must be real too. And that surely must be true, because love and loss exist together in my heart every time I touch you. At once my world is splendid and desolate as I feel you there and know you won’t be there for very much longer. You’re never anywhere for very long.
There’s something to be said for running away. I understand why you do it. I think it’s brave. In some ways I think it’s braver than staying. To just uproot, to fling yourself headfirst into the unknown. I stick things out. I stay put because I dread getting lost. You relish getting lost. You use it as an excuse to change direction at will. Or turn it into a roundabout route home. If you come back this time, which you will, like you have all the times before, I will still be standing in the same spot. I will not have discovered anything, I will not have conquered anything and I will not have got lost. I will still be where you left me. I’m scared to go anywhere else.
It does hurt to stand still and watch you go though. You still expect that of me every time. And yet I can’t really begrudge you the leaving somehow. Because you give me everything when you are here. You give everyone everything you have until there’s very little left for yourself. I think that’s part of why you have to go. You have to recover. For all your acceptance that people let you down, you never even consider the possibility of letting them down first. You wait until they’re ready to leave you and in the meantime they have everything you have to give. But I know you give me more than any of them. You don’t just give me all your effort or your energy or your time. You give me everything that is you. You hand it over to me, with a fearful look in your eyes but a strange trust nonetheless. From the moment you realised I was as broken as you were, you knew you had to give me your whole soul, you whole body. And you gave both, willingly. You were resigned to the fact that our shared distrust in certainties had created a certainty in itself. I doubt the irony was lost on you. The two people who believe nothing is certain can always be certain of each other’s company. But still you left and I cursed you for it. You left for some other country or continent or galaxy and I cursed you up and down. I demanded answers from your silence. Are you missing me whilst you’re out there finding yourself? Finding yourself. God, what a fucking cliché. You didn’t find yourself. And you never will by leaving. You are too wrapped up in me to be able to find yourself anywhere else. Somewhere in that head of yours – that heart of yours – you know that. And it scares you to death. You leave because nothing stays the same. Or at least, it isn’t supposed to. You leave because our own rules tell you I can’t still love you. Just like all the other people you loved have said goodbye I will too. So you beat me to the punch, I guess. Over and over again you beat me to the punch. I can’t break you if you’re not there, right?
You always come back though. You make no promises that this will be the last time because you don’t want to have to break them. We’ve both had enough of broken promises from the rest of the world, we don’t need them from each other. At first I was just grateful that you were back. Ever-so-slightly in awe of the fact I was enough to make you defy your own rules. Coz the whole Second Chance thing wasn’t something you did often. You tried it once, a long time ago, with someone who must have undervalued you greatly because they broke you again swiftly after. For some reason I’m worth the risk though, over and over and over again. Call it gravity, call it inevitable, call it what you will. But you will always end up back here. Pulling at me and crying and scratching your fingertips across my jawline.
And I know you love me.
You let that much slip. When you were trying to let go of my hand, as we kissed, you whispered it as if the words themselves might break. You said it because you couldn’t not say it any more. You needed to tell me what I already knew because you wanted to prove to me that this wasn’t really you saying goodbye. This was you saying you can’t cope right now. Saying that you had to disappear for a while. Some sort of punishment for yourself for not learning the lesson that things move. People change. The world turns around. If you close your eyes and pause long enough, you can almost feel it turn. But just imagine, if you close your eyes and hold your breath long enough you can feel something entirely opposite; you can feel me still holding onto you.
The thing is that, by some wrong turning or accidental fall, you clambered into me. You became so much a part of who I am that you became some sort of life force within me. You’re in my veins, so to speak. You have become part of my life in way that is wholly and entirely unchangeable because I cannot get you out. And I have tried, Jay. I have attempted it. I’ve tried to separate it all. Every time you fight me and every time you disappear. But it is still you that I taste on my lips, you that I can hear just beneath my own breathing. I cannot get you out. I cannot do it.
Everything gets dark inside your head. Because you can’t see that there can be any exception to the rule. Things break. People break. Love breaks. You can’t take it. Loving me, being loved by me, I’m not sure which. You can’t handle the pressure of being wrapped up in someone else, because that gives them control. You need control for your sanity. No matter how much you trust me not to use it, the potential is still there for destruction. The potential alone destroys you.
But I know you can feel that one spot of sunlight, the sliver of warmth on your face as you catch that first glimpse of me when you come back – because you always come back – and you see that I have neither moved nor broken. And I never will, I promise you (for what the promise is worth.)
Especially not if you stay.
And I don’t mean ‘stay’ in the sense of me always being tied up in you.
And I don’t mean ‘stay’ as in always coming back to me when you’re done disappearing.
I mean stay.
Stay like a blind leap into certainty, stay like you are living your whole life with your eyes closed and feeling my hand in yours.
Stay like I’m in your veins.
Or...you know...just...stay here.
With me.