The site is doing something interesting (and by 'interesting' I mean 'annoying') where it doesn't let me upload documents. So we're trying out the "copy and paste" function. Apologies in advance if this goes terribly awry.
Anyway, here is a very short, very speedily written ditty that is pure fluff. Was trolling through the old, old, old AF fanfiction archives and was struck by how depressing a lot of it was. Yes, misery can be beautiful. But so can happiness, dammit! So, in a weak effort to support my case, I give you this.
The Slow Burn
The Samuel Beckett bridge rises like some futuristic whale breaching the river Liffey. The wind is cold and wet and bites into the skin. It is November, however, and no one expects anything better from the weather. Artemis looks down into the choppy grey water, but there is nothing there to hold his attention.
Balancing on the middle rung of the guard rail, she shrugs up the wide collar of her wool coat, trying, in vain, to protect her face from the wind.
"I don't know how you people stand it," she says.
"Better bad weather than no weather," he replies.
She smiles, eyeing him over the edge of her collar. "Touché."
He leans against her, his shoulder pressing against hers. As a child, he had always thought his life would be rather like a heist movie: full of well-dressed villains and daring deeds and witty banter.
"Ugh, how can I be so wet when it's not even raining." She scrunches up her face, brushing the hair from her eyes. Her red fringe is limp and heavy with damp. "I swear, you could wring water out of me."
He rests his head on her shoulder. Before him, beads of water hang precariously from the fibres of her jacket, reflecting the grey world around them with crystalline clarity. It's quite beautiful, he thinks, this inverted world.
Certainly, he has played the part of the well-dressed villain. The well-dressed hero even, once or twice. In those days, there were plenty of daring deeds. (Possibly too many, when one looks back on it with a more mature and more mortal eye.) He nuzzles into the crook of her neck, smiling. And there has certainly never been a shortage of witty banter.
"Why don't I take you home and we can wring you out there," he offers.
She chuckles deep in her throat. "That sounds promising."
But the years had gone by and, more to their surprise than anyone else's, his life had become something altogether different. For, though it would disgust his younger self no end, his life, it turns out, isn't a heist movie at all; instead, it bears a remarkable resemblance to a romance.
"I'm awfully cold, though," she says and he can hear the smile in her voice. "After I'm wrung out will I be warmed up?"
"Of course. I'll see to it personally."
Somehow, somewhere, his life became one of those rare love stories that doesn't end in tragedy and fatal passion. After all its fitful starts and stops, all the violence and uncertainty of its beginnings, now it is a slow burning flame that flickers, but never goes out.
"Well, I suppose that's an offer I really can't refuse." Holly looks down at him and, despite the years, her mismatched eyes still thrill him.
Let me always be with you, he thinks.
She turns, winding her arms around his neck, letting him take her weight. "Take me home, Artemis," she says, her cold cheek pressed to his.
And so he does. So he always will.