Malloreigh Hamilton
July 4-5, 2000
Have you ever tried to express your feelings, but totally, entirely failed?
It's such a frustrating feeling... perhaps, in this case, the most frustrating of all. I feel as if we've known each other forever, and perhaps we have. Or perhaps it's just the GF. Either way, it's been a long time, so long that I can't ever remember being without him. Ah, he gives me such a glorious feeling... like I can do anything! Being around him just fills me with warmth and self-confidence. It's as if his seeming overabundance of confidence rubs off on other people.
That's probably why I'm in love with him. But, of course, I'm not his type - I'd treat him like the prince he is. I already do. I don't think he sees that in how I act. Perhaps I'm too silent, too wordlessly complimenting. Wordlessly loving. Wordlessly needing. Yes, needing... that seems to be right. I do need him. I need the acceptance, the self-confidence, the feeling of belonging. I need him to reinforce the belief in me that, yes, we are better.
Most of all I need to hope, even if that hope is buried deep inside me, that someday, maybe, he'll realize how I feel. I've tried telling him, I've tried showing him. Nothing seems to work. I know he's blind to everything that doesn't directly concern his well-being. He's arrogant that way; he believes, and rightly so, that the world should revolve around him, because, after all, he is the only one that should matter. It's really a shame that not many seem to think the same as he.
He's like a god to me. A golden-haired, sword-wielding god. I place him on a pedestal in my mind, a pedestal surrounded by the worshipping. And in my mind, in my fantasies, I am standing next to him. In my fantasies I am his lover, the only person he values as much as himself. In my fantasies, my typical, dime-romance fantasies, I can curl up with him in bed on a lazy Sunday morning, in one of his shirts, or perhaps entirely shirtless. I can run my fingertips over that silvering but still red scar across his forehead, a reminder of the old times. I can wrap myself up in his trademark coat, the coat he lets no-one touch, for, as he says, it's sacred. It's a part of who he is.
It's a part of the man I love.
The man I can't express anything to. It was difficult enough betraying him... expressing my love has proved to be the most difficult task I have ever set out to accomplish. I've sworn to myself that someday I will manage it. I must, for myself, and for my relationship with him. I fear, however, the way he will react. A declaration of my love for him may shatter our friendship forever! Of course, it may bring to the surface feelings that I haven't detected in him. Feelings of love for me... ah, I cannot think like that. I know I'll only be disappointed.
But oh, do I love him.
I can see it in the way she moves, the way she speaks, the way she looks at me. I know she thinks I'm blind to how she feels, but I'm not. I care for her, I see her every day. I'm not the uncaring bastard everyone makes me out to be - I think I deserve a little more than that. I was only trying to fulfil my dream, just as anyone else would. So I had to make a few sacrifices! The only thing I regret about the entire deal is that I almost lost her.
She did her best, that I know. She just couldn't understand the lengths I went to, and why. It wasn't for myself - I realize that now. It was for the rivalry, for the thrill of battle, for that wonderful feeling that comes with having the entire world fear and hate you. That feeling of importance. It seems to me that no matter how unimportant I feel, she feels as if I am the most important, influential man in the world, and worships me as such. That too is a wonderful feeling - someone who believes in and loves you unconditionally. When I lost my way, fulfilling my dream, it was because I was too obsessed with my own goals and the goals of those I served, and I wasn't concerned in the least about her. I had forgotten how truly and purely she loves me.
She doesn't know that I know she loves me, and she definitely doesn't know that I love her. Maybe it's because she's been too nervous around me recently to be able to tell -- the girl watches me like a hawk; she can tell the slightest difference in emotional temperature in a glance. I swear she can sense me coming when I'm still two rooms away. But lately, she's been preoccupied with something. I guess I'm not observant enough - or perhaps I don't know her well enough - to tell what it is.
Her silence is so beautiful, and she is so beautiful in her silence. With her it's not golden, but silver. She is, all around, the essence of untraditional, scarred beauty - and no-one knows it, but everything she seems to be is a mask. She created it to escape from ridicule before I rescued her from such. She's not the tough tomboy that people seem to assume she is, just as I'm not so much the uncaring bastard as my image seems to project. She's a very emotional person, and yet a very silent, somewhat socially inept person. She has so much trouble expressing her feelings, especially to me.
I wish she could somehow begin to tell me how she feels. Maybe then I'd have the courage to tell her how I feel. I don't usually lack courage, but love is such a tender thing and going about this the wrong way could shatter a friendship that has lasted through more years than either of us can remember. Going about this the right way could mean creating heaven for the both of us.
Creating heaven... in my arms, holding her close and kissing that beautiful silver hair. To feel that defiant heart beating behind the frail ribcage, masked by that milk-white skin. To run my lips over the scars crossing her left eye, and to whisper in her ear that she's loved... by her god.
"SEIFER...?"
He nearly jumped. She had come up on him soundlessly, as always. "Hey, Fuuj," he said, nervous, but trying his best to sound somewhat uninterested, despite the desperate curiosity that had overcome him every time she spoke to him in the past few days.
"JUST..." She looked down for a moment, gathering courage and concentration and trying to find the words that had decided to stick in that region of the mind that you just can't access. "Can we talk?"
His heart was pounding in his ears and he was afraid he was blushing. "Yeah, of course." He smiled that arrogant, sexy smile that was another of his trademarks.
She took a quick look around, as if she'd never seen the room before, and then sat down on the bed, gaining her composure. "I've been... meaning to tell you this for awhile..." She wasn't going to be able to do it.
His stomach was heavy with guilt; he wasn't making the slightest move, leaving it all up to her. He had decided that she was trying to say what he hoped she was, judging from the slight pink blush staining her cheeks. Either that, or his fly was open.
She brushed a lock of silvery hair away from the menacing, pirate-like eyepatch covering one of her eyes, a movement that was, in its way, graceful and beautiful and irresistible. He felt the guilt in his stomach pulse, and sat down beside her, unconsciously moving close.
And then, consciously, he placed one hand on the back of her neck and the other on her waist, and pressed his lips to hers.
Finally...