AS SIMPLE AS THAT

.:.

She didn't know how or when she fell in love with him. It just happened, like a bomb dropped on a nice, calm land. She blamed him, though. It was entirely his fault - his and his incredible imperfections' fault. His flawed smile, and laugh, and voice. His awful humour. And desastrous common sense. He was infuriating, being so normal all the bloody time. And maybe that's why she fell so hard. Because he was ordinary, and at the same time he was not. He was a brave kid and an old soul. He was all she wanted to be but could not bring herself to become. But in the end, it did not matter in the least, because she was in love.

And then she'd just gone and told him. He simply smiled - his stupid, crooked, and beautiful smile -, like he'd always known but patiently waited for her to realize it too. How could someone have such enticing qualities and at the same time be so annoying without even trying?

"What are you thinking about?" He suddenly asked, breaking her train of thoughts, his face turned up to her with a sleepy smile, eyes still half-closed.

She scoffed. "I tell you… well, that, and you ask me what I'm thinking about?"

He simply shrugged. "That, I knew for ages already. No, I'm curious about now. About what you are thinking about, right now. Here, with me."

"Well now," she scoffed once more, a bright red colour staining her cheeks, "I'm thinking of doing this!" And she punctuated her words with a determined yet weak punch to his shoulder.

He didn't even flinch, though, and his contagious laugh soon filled up the room.

"You're bloody annoying, you know that?" she laughed half-heartedly.

"So you keep telling me," he retorted. "But really, I don't see it!"

"Of course you don't," she said, rolling her eyes before curling her fingers in his jumper. "Maybe you should do something about that," she offered, eyes safely locked on her fingers, which seemed to have a life of their own.

"I can think of a few other thing to do far more interesting than that, can't you?" he asked, his hands cupping her face with more delicacy than he had ever showed.

Annoying was definitely his middle name, she thought. "Sorry, but no," she replied, in a shy yet angry voice.

His hands dropped and his smile faded away, concern showing through his eyes. "What's wrong? I thought…"

"Yes, you thought. You thought it was okay to have it easy because I said something, that it was okay to be arrogant about it, as though you knew just everything, that just because I opened up, it gave you the right to feel over-confident and… you just… you just annoy me!"

"I love you," he shrugged. "It's not about being cocky or arrogant. It's about being confident in that love. You may have just realised it but I've known for years. And I don't want to waste another second not being able to hold your hand or kiss your smile. I love you. It's really as simple as that."

She could not start to imagine the degree of redness that her cheeks had taken. "Well, if it's that simple," she whispered. He smiled again and for the first time since she knew him, she could really see the love he always talked about. "Okay," she finally said, her eyes dropping to the ground, avoiding his, as she realised what all this really meant.

"Okay? Okay as in I can… take your hand?" he tried gently, taking her hand with a wicked smile.

She met his gaze, an embarrassed smile cracking her lips, and slightly shook her head. "Is it always going to be like that? You being so annoyingly cocky, me trying desperately hard not to love every second of it?"

"Well, I believe so. It wouldn't be fun otherwise, now, would it?"

And he did what he'd always dreamed of. He closed his eyes and gently covered her smile with his, his lips lightly brushing hers, his hands caging her face with tenderness like she was the most precious in the world - and that's exactly how she felt when he tugged her closer.

A/N

Hi everyone!

We're back with yet another collection of drabbles, but this one is slightly different. As you may have read in the summary, these drabbles were written as exquisite corpses, meaning we each wrote one sentence, taking turns, without ever saying to each other what we had in mind in terms of characters or plot. This will explain why some drabbles might seem weird or unexpected or both, but the most important thing will always be that writing these is a lot of fun. And we love having fun.

Nevertheless, we hope you like them, and please don't hesitate to let us hear about your opinion!

Now, in this drabble, we couldn't agree on the characters involved, so we simply left the names out. But we're curious... Who did you imagine as "he" and "she" while reading?

Del(&)Plume