For the Valentine's Day contest - it's really, really short, but I sort of liked it this way :) I hope you enjoy.
Son, his father had once said to him, the stench of the alcohol he'd consumed heavy on his breath and his eyes unfocused as he looked down at his boy. There's someone out there for everyone, even you. And you'll know for certain when you find her.
It had been almost ironic – at the time, ten-year-old Larten Crepsley hadn't understood what his father had meant, and none of his words, even now that the ten-year-old was significantly older, seemed to have a very great bearing on how often he struck and belittled the woman he'd proclaimed such profound love for. It was for this reason that little Larten Crepsley had dismissed the sentiment as foolish.
He could hardly believe that now he understood what had once seemed like just the ramblings of a drunkard. It had been no secret that there was no love lost between himself and his father, but for once, it seemed the man might have said something worth listening to. The core elements of what his father had said – that everyone was destined for someone – seemed quite reasonable and plausible to him now, and had done ever since he'd crossed paths with Arra Sails.
He'd once fancied himself madly in love with a girl called Emilia, who'd lived a few minutes walk from the crammed house he'd shared with his father and another family. His memories of her were hazy now – plenty had happened since then, and even thought it had all seemed important at the time, his brief obsession with her had faded into insignificance against his other experiences – but he remembered that she'd been quite pretty and quite nice in a doe-eyed, rosy-cheeked sort of way. He wasn't sure if there were any other reasons that he'd ever showed an interest in her, and if so they evidently hadn't been memorable ones. It fascinated him that he had ever thought that was really all love was.
It seemed strange and impossible that he might ever be able to look at someone else and really see them the way he could with Arra. Of course there were prettier, kinder and in many ways simpler women (perhaps one that wouldn't have laughed so openly at him for suggesting that Valentine's Day was something Vampires could perhaps celebrate too), but something about her frustrating complexity and her often volatile temperament renders him somehow incapable of resisting her.
But of course, it isn't only the things he hates about her sometimes that make him love her. She's both the most absolutely frustrating person he thinks could possibly ever exist, with all her pride and her sometimes-bravery sometimes-stupidity, and the most wonderful one. Really, it's looking down at her while she sleeps with her arm coiled around his own, that one precious flash of vulnerability, that completes her, that makes her perfect in the most imperfect of ways.
Though finally Larten thinks he understands what his drunken father meant to tell him all those years ago, he does not exactly think that understanding the words of a man who had systematically destroyed his family through his own alcoholism and selfishness is much use to him now. Perhaps, even though it had been the old man who'd given him the advice, he'd never really understood it himself. Larten remembers his mother with her fragile wrists and a heart so easily broken by a brute with a bottle of gin and a heavy fist. He can take one look and know, no matter what, that he loves Arra too much to hurt her.
She interrupts. "What are you staring at?" She growls crossly, creaking open one grey eye to glare at him before pulling up the shirt she is using as a makeshift blanket up over her head.
"Nothing," he says, and then, as an afterthought, "Hag."
"Go back to sleep then, moron." She responds, but doesn't object when he presses the tenderest kiss to her forehead.
Theirs is a special type of love, he thinks. And he wouldn't change it for the world.