I can't stand to look at you.
The letter started off simple.
I can't stand to look at you.
He looked over the first sentence he had written, shaky lines under a pretense of neatness and formality. And then, he continued.
I can't stand seeing your face, it went on, and knowing it belongs to the same boy that used to adore me so. I can't stand seeing the face that used to be that little boy's glaring at me, mocking me for anything perceived as a mistake or misgiving. I can't stand being a failure in your eyes when you used to be the apple of mine.
He stopped. Breathed. In, and out. Once, twice, three times. He kept writing.
I hate that even hearing your voice makes me picture you. Even when I look away from you and tell you to cease and desist with your awful desecration of the Queen's English, so that I may perhaps have a moment of respite from your blinding optimism, you simply keep talking. Now, you ignore even this simple request from me, when before you would do anything to see me smile. I did notice, yes. We are not all as obtuse and ignorant of the atmosphere as you are.
It was funny how none of this had even seemed real until he started to write. Considering the pain, and the nights spent woken from dreams of desire, and the clinching feeling somewhere deep beneath the lively thrumming of London, he had convinced himself that maybe it was something else. Maybe he was just lonely. Maybe it was politics. Maybe it was brewing civil unrest. Maybe it was anything except what he was most afraid was actually hurting him.
I hate that I am, and then he stopped. He was what? Perhaps, at this point, he just hated that he was at all. Rome had collapsed, so why hadn't he? Empires weren't meant to live past their glory days. endeared toenamored byin want of your presencefascinated withfixated on in love with you.
And then he read it again, past everything he had crossed out.
I hate that I am in love with you.
Just like that, it all came crashing down on him.
Everything that had started to creep up on him in the months following the Revolution, everything that had began to nip at his heels when the War of 1812 broke out, everything that had snuck up behind him in World War I, everything that had sunk its claws into him when World War II concluded. It all hit him with the firing power of the unused nukes from the Cold War, and he doubled over the desk, head folded in his arms while the riotous London pounded irregularly in his chest.
He breathed again. His throat felt dry and his eyes felt wet, and he desperately needed his body to remember its priorities and reverse both of those standards. The sentence demanded he write more. But why should he, when he himself was suddenly crushed with the weight of an irreversible finality?
He collected himself. Wet his throat and dried his eyes. Put the pen to the paper again, and signed it. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. And then, below that: England.
The pen was set aside and the paper gathered into his hands. As easily as getting rid of junk mail, he tore it - once, twice down the middle. Crumpled the pieces together, and grabbed the writing utensil.
And then he dropped the letter and the pen into the dustbin beneath his desk.
Making his feelings real was enough. He didn't need to make the rejection real too.
A/N: so, FFN, implementing a strikeout feature into stories would be awfully nice. and you know, it figures that my first finished piece of USUK would be shameless, unforgivable, done-twenty-times-over angst. goddamnit, self, we are a slightly-above-mediocre writer, we can do a little better than this.
i am terribly sorry for unoriginal plotline, boring characterization, melodrama, dumbness, and everything that is wrong with this fic, which is everything. except maybe my spelling. ): hope you guys kind of liked it anyways