A/N: This ficlet sprung from my recently awoken dark little muses and fits so many pairings, so many impossible loves, that I didn't even bother trying to narrow down the choice. The rating is only to be on the safe side, I don't like the idea of drowning young ones in angst. So be creative, and in your review, tell me which pairing it is you see in here… Enjoy!
Cliché
There's never been a worse cliché than can't live with you can't live without you. Two blundering idiots incapable of ever saying the right thing, of making each other happy, and incapable to face up to it, suck it up, get over each other and move the hell on.
They're the type of couples that argue about the inconsequential but let the important things go by because they're too afraid to see what's really at stake. Oh, you know which couples I mean; the ones fighting even about the smell of pumpkin juice simply because it fills that silence that gnaws and burns and tears, screaming out for all but them to hear, that underlying difference that keeps them apart. They're the type who can lash out at each other with low blows only those you've let into your heart could come up with. Far worse, they're the type that does it only because it reflects the strength with which they hate themselves for causing the other so much pain.
They're the type of people you silently pray you'll never become; exhausted, wounded, intrinsically masochistic. You can tell just from looking in their eyes that all they want to do is fall into sweet blissful sleep, but that sleep won't come unless those warm arms are wrapped around them and that those warm arms are loathe to turn to stone or to push them away with titanic strength in the blink of an eye. No matter what their personality, telltale signs give them away. It's that girl with her crass jokes and incessant chatter, so bent on seeming carefree she's unaware of the bottom lip she's bitten to the point of bleeding. It's that quiet, brooding bloke who seems perfectly undisturbed, who has convinced all, including himself, that he is acting no differently to other days, simply because his glass comes down on the table with just a fraction more force, just because his words have more of an edge and his eyes a cold, impenetrable shield.
They're the type of people who, if you're close to them, provide you with the most ludicrous murderous urges. You can see every possible outcome of their next move and you know that they can too, and yet they carry on, because, bless their pathetic little souls, they simply don't have any other alternative. You want to keep them apart as badly as you want to fix them, and soon you find a whole little corner in your heart that has warmed up to their cause. And it's that little corner that will not let you rest in peace if you do not play psychologist in the late hours of the night, if you don't give them that cup of butter-beer, or pour them a fire-whiskey, pretending not to see the tears welled up in the corner of their eyes. It's that blasted little corner in your heart that transformed the stubborn git in front of you into a vulnerable, unprotected child.
They're the type of people you would hex into oblivion, if only to bring them peace, like putting an old, beloved pet to sleep to end its suffering. They love so intensely that they could find a way to love, to haunt and to destroy each other, even in death. And yet, in life, they pass up on the opportunity, hearts breaking every step of the way, perhaps because of one's ideals, the other's lack of them, or a fear that runs through them both. And so they're reduced to being no more than the forgotten casualties of an unspoken war: lovers of light and of dark, polar opposites that attract and destroy each other.
They're people you can recognise a mile away, and that frustrate you because they could see what was happening from the day it all began. The warning is there, long before they even lay eyes on each other, but it's a cry upon deaf ears and blind hearts.
So tell me, love, why did you come to me when you knew I would never have the strength for running? Why did you reduce me to nothing but a mere cliché?