A Hostage to Kindness by Verity
Okay, you know it's always a portent of SOMETHING when I start listening to Moz on repeat...
"A hostage to kindness" - Morrissey, November Spawned A Monster
All she ever wanted was for him to understand her. That was all.
No, that wasn't it. Derek understood her. Far two well. Two shared minds, a mind mirrored, infinity - two ovals connected, a single strip where you could start at one side and end up on the other. Infinity.
But there are limits to infinity.
He was irritatingly dull-witted at times, or at least, not adept at interpreting the information he knew at a gut level was correct. His mind rejected it as nonsense. Sometimes Maigrey found that the capabilities for mental gymnastics that the Blood Royal had endowed him - the both of them - were less a conveniance than a nuisance. As far as they were concerned.
Not that there was a them, or could be a them. Sometimes she simply burst into tears, mainly because they were a useful outlet that Derek could never bear to chastise her for, and she hated the sobs as she choked them out. She hated their falseness, just as she hated herself for loving the way he always handed her a hankerchief, just as she hated the way he always stood off then, worried but never trying to comfort her.
"Touch me!" she wanted to scream. "Touch me or kiss me or fuck me, I don't care, so long as you don't just stand there looking at me!"
But she was a hostage to kindness; and so she let him stand there, and stand there, and never cried out for him, never showed the weakness or the desire she felt.
Except for once.
But by then, it was already too late.