Author's Notes: I saw the livejournal icon that has this quote and it inspired a story. I laughed way too hard at that LJ icon. Wrote this ages ago.
I also have to note that sometimes I forget 'idiot' is even an insult as in both my family (most of my life) and in my fandoms, the term is used with an inherent sense of endearment and patient love over whatever foolishness abounds.
"Today I will say it. After all these years I haven't, it's about time," Rosethorn grumbled into the looking-glass. Her reflection was maddeningly patient—a frustrating first. She could scarce believe she was about to practice those three words so forbidden to her in combination: I, love, you.
Yet she did. She sat, paced or stood and practiced speaking into the looking-glass. Some were long, others short and sweet—according to her, which was admittedly not reliable. At last she struck a confession of an average length, intellectual and—hopefully—comprehendible. Rosethorn presented it again and grinned sheepishly to herself for having to rehearse at all.
It was time to speak with Lark.
"Lark?" Rosethorn called from the kitchen, allowing her voice carry.
"Yes, Rosie?" Lark answered as she peeked her head out of her workshop.
"A word?"
Lark nodded and swept her arm in the doorway, signalling Rosethorn was free to enter. Rosethorn took a deep breath and did so, watching the smooth skin of Lark's cheek.
"We've been together a long while. I wanted to thank you for… I would have been… You gave me…" she fumbled over her tongue at her mind's criticism: a woman her age unable to say three one-syllable words strung together.
Lark put a gentle hand on Rosethorn's arm and stroked. "Rosie, what in Mila's name are you trying to say?"
"That I love you, you idiot!" Rosethorn exclaimed, eyebrows drawn and eyes fierce. They widened as she recognised her words. Her mind must have been replaced by a Water dedicate's while in slumber, blurting things out like that.
"Well, then." Lark paused. She stroked longer lines up and down Rosethorn's arm, and grinned. "I love you too."
Lark bent to press her lips to Rosethorn's. Her mind was ceaseless—it was that simple?
Of course. Lark had always understood her best; Lark surely knew it before the words were uttered at all. It only made sense that the eventual delivery fit the proclaimer: words had never been Rosethorn's preferred method of communication.
It was in the way she watched Lark over the dinner table after a day of hard work, in those moments when Rosethorn's gaze could rightfully be considered soft; it was in the unnecessary breaks Rosethorn would take from her work only when Lark requested, and no one else; it was in the flowers Rosethorn had carefully arranged and planted around Lark's cloth-bound workroom; it was in the way Rosethorn would let a touch or a gaze linger; it was in the way Rosethorn said Lark's name, with a soft L for love and a hard K to remind her of her luck in finding such a patient woman so full of life, love and laughter. It was in the way Lark's presence always drew Rosethorn in, and in the way Rosethorn didn't mind—not at all, not one bit—despite her charade of grumbles.
She deepened the kiss.
Lark understood. Lark understood everything.
