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Sorry for being so late but I assure you that not only this story is going to have its conclusion but it's also going to have three extra bonus chapters not included on the original to give you a more satisfying ending!=) As always, thank you so much for all your patience and support! It really means a lot to me!
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My special thanks to the person that made me able to keep on with this project, the amazing and kind, miss Zeplerfer! Also, my thanks to cinkun(Yeah, thanks for paying attention to my words! Gilbert does have some bias in his perspective of the events and this is important to understand Roderich's true feelings!), alphonseMuchaLucha(the important thing to me is that you're here now! Welcome!XD), Tsying-me(Don't worry! I'm very, very alive! I'm just reeeeally slow doing stuff! lol Making people so excited about my work is something that makes me very happy so thank you!), katella only(LOL, I get the feel), Kat857(I'm late but I'm here and thank you!), pinkturnip9876(Gilbert's point of view is rare indeed but that's what makes it so interesting for me to write!), AutumnMoonFae(I'm very glad you appreciat my sense of humour!XD), Ice Music(Believe me, it's completely intentional. Drama, comedy and romance are the best combo!XD), Zeplerfer again(TRUE, that was a great lesson to everybody here, actually lol. Also, yeah! I like to make characters with friends and supportive people around them!), GirloftheArts(SORRY but this is all going for a happy ending! Seriously!), Noire Knightmare(Tell your cat I'm sorry. lol ), JeSuisUnePomme(Now that I'm learning french, your name seems very funny to me. Don't worry. The updates may take long but they will always come.), PersonPlaceorThing(XD) and Cardfigther by Marple(Pruaus INDEED) for all your reviews! You guys are seriously the best! Thanks to you all and for everyone who liked this fic and it's following this work! I can't thank you enough!
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I hope you will all enjoy this next chapter and leave some support because I really can't thank you enough for your help, guys. Translating is hard but I keep motivated to do my best because of you all!=)
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Take care and have a lovely day, dear readers! Cya(hopefully) soon ~ Until then!
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Chapter 14.
"…"
I honestly can't remember what was the first thought on my mind when he said that. I don't remember if I got to open my mouth to ask a question, if my jaw simply dropped, if I widened my eyes, if I laughed… I don't even remember if I was overcome by skepticism, shock, confusion, anger or another specific feeling. All that comes to my mind when I think about my internal reaction to Roderich's unexpected sentence is a great, great white.
As if my mind went on a pause.
"On the same night we had our fight, I went to his house and we had an important talk." I remember listening to Roderich say this after a certain amount of time in silence, which could have lasted three seconds or three minutes in my obscured perception. His voice seemed distant, though he was just a few meters away. I do not know if his voice was low or if the sounds were muffled only to me... "He coped surprisingly well with my decision. Especially for a groom who had his plans canceled after all the preparations for his wedding. Do you know why he reacted so well?"
That question managed to ignite my brain.
Normally, I would have focused on how surreal and absurd Roderich's story sounded and my first reaction probably would have been letting out a shocked 'Did you seriously break your engagement with Vash?!'. However, this would be my attitude as a wedding planner, a relationship that I no longer had with Eldestein. As Gilbert Beilschmidt, the first thing that occurred to me was entirely a personal anger that I did not restrain for a single second.
"Please, tell me that you're not about to come with some 'because unlike you, he's so mature and like me and blah, blah, blah' crap!" I went ahead of him, with a look full of seething anger in a voice laden with a tone of 'don't-you-dare!'. "Because I swear to God, Roderich, that I have not the slightest drop of patience to…!"
"He told me he was preparing himself for this moment ever since our last dinner."
An interruption in a moment like that, it would be like throwing gasoline on the fire of my wrath.
However, it was effective in silence me.
I realized that this was an interruption with a different content from the rest of our discussion. That was not a bitter or accusatory comment. Not at all. To be exact, it was a quiet, frightened and visibly hesitating interruption. That's why I paid it so much attention.
Years of interaction with him taught me that the most spontaneous and sincere moments about Roderich's feelings were the mildest and quietest ones.
I saw clearly the effort he put in each one of those words he said so softly. How would I manage to ignore Roderich at a time like this? He was clearly about to tell me something very important.
It was beyond my strength to ignore Roderich when he was like that, even if that so important topic no longer concerned me, considering that I was no longer working for him.
Maybe the experience of his break-up with Vash resulted in some sudden realization about himself, which he wanted to present to me as an apology or as a necessary outburst… I didn't know. Whatever it was, he needed me to hear that and, seeing the degree of importance it had to him, I could not consider doing things any other way.
Because of this, despite knowing that the story had nothing to do with me, I just put my hands on my hips, lowered my head, while raising my eyes, sealed my mouth and, well, I waited.
He sighed and quickly sucked on his lower lip, making it a bit moister.
"According to him, someone would have to be an idiot to look at my face that night we had dinner and not realize that I was in love with you."
…
…
…
… What?
"What?"
"Which just confirms my opinion that your stupidity is deep and unsolvable," he added, shaking his head, as if considering me a lost cause.
Wait a moment. What the hell was going on? I… had heard something I could not have heard. It was impossible. I probably didn't hear it right or got confused with the information. Probably there were some bad communication issues on my side. It had to be something like that.
After all, I had heard something too absurd to be real! Ha, ha!
Ha, ha, ha, ha… Ah.
I do not know why I felt the need to laugh. It's not like I was on the mood for a good laugh but still I laughed. I think this need came more as a nervous reflex than anything lese.
"You're…?" I put one hand on the side of my head and dazedly pointed to Roderich with the other. I was complete and intensely lost. "I mean, you were ...? What?"
I mean, that was impossible. It couldn't be.
The only portion of me that still retained some awareness was waiting, just waiting, for the given moment in which the aristocrat would say something like 'Gilbert, what's that expression on your face? Please, don't tell me you believed such an obvious bluff. Now that I captured your interest, can we deal with professional issues?'. Yep, I was aware that even the young lord would not reach that level of evilness, but… What else could explain what I had heard?
I couldn't even consider the idea that he could proceed with this line of argument, much less that he would end up embarrassed by what he said, since he obviously couldn't have said what I thought he had said or talked about it the way I interpreted it. Heh! Not a chance!
However, defying all my sense of what was real or not, and annihilating all the remains of coherent thought in my mind, when he saw how openly dumbfounded and awestruck I was, Roderich became shy.
SHY.
If I thought that what was happening could not be more surreal, that was the proof that I was completely mistaken. I knew what that annoyed and slightly flushed face meant but I could never imagine that it would come up in this scenario. Roderich was embarrassed. A meteor falling from my roof would have surprised me less.
My mouth went completely dry.
Meanwhile, Roderich crossed and uncrossed his arms over his chest multiple times, unable to pick a position for them. He began to aimlessly walk around my kitchen, with his eyes always fixed at the ground.
"I assumed it wouldn't be very wise to announce the end of my relationship with Vash to you right away," he broke the silence, striving to sound very composed and sure of himself, for someone who could not speak two words without taking a breath and couldn't stop moving his body or find a fixed spot to stay in the tiny area of my kitchen. "It was honestly tiring to have my opinions so discarded in our last conversation and I decided I wouldn't give any openings for you to suggest that I was 'acting on impulse!' and that I would 'end up reuniting with my fiancé at the very last minute!'. Today is the date I was supposed to get married and here I am, so, no. I'm not changing my mind. Can you hear me now?"
Yep. It's not like I was able to do anything else. My brain was suffering from an overdose of information at the moment and I was still digesting the sentence 'I ended my engagement with Vash.'
"Uh… Hm." I was practically scanning the floor of my apartment with my eyes, running my tongue over my lower teeth and feeling the lines of my face twisting in such an indecisive mess, just like the position of Roderich in my kitchen.
Part of me believed that, at any moment, my phone would ring 'More than a feeling,' and I would wake up in my bed, with my plans to take alcohol only at night ruined. Man, I would need so much alcohol when I woke up from that crazy dream.
It's weird how I felt I was in a dream, at the same time that I knew that I was more awake than ever. What I can say about it is that I never sympathized so much with the characters of 'Inception'.
"Wonderful," he said, seeming pleased with himself.
For some reason, he considered my insecure sounds a cue to speak, and with a more proud, solemn and critical tone, which sounded much more familiar to me.
"Gilbert Beilschmidt, you don't fit in my rational parameters of self-indulgence concerning relationships. You tease me, don't hesitate to fight me when I make mistakes, and have the weirdest sense of fashion. Our personalities are completely different and your profile is in no way compatible with what I would expect from an ideal partner."
Okay. Now that fit what I knew about Rod but it made no sense with everything he was saying before. Seriously, what the fuck?
What was going on there?! For real! What the fuck, man. It was a false alarm?! Well, that would make way more sense but I really thought that…! Urgh!
If you're going to insult me, then insult me already! Don't speak in a way that only makes people confused! Inconstancy, thy name is Roderich Eldestein!
"Hold on a second. I thought that you were saying that you …." feeling lost there, I put my hand over my forehead, noticing that I was frowning by the multiple lines I could feel there.
"I probably acquired these foolish feelings for you at some point during the preparations for my first wedding." He took a deep breath as he said it and with this single line he managed to drag me again to a most confusing and incomprehensible universe of doubts.
'Foolish feelings', he said. That sounded like a confirmation that he was indeed… No! Not a chance! It couldn't be. Still, if that wasn't what he meant, what could he possibly be saying? I had NO IDEA about what was going on there. Heck, I didn't even know what I was supposed to feel about what he was saying! I was so carried away by my shock and confusion that I wasn't in any condition to think about what other emotions Roderich's words aroused in me.
Seeing that I was completely frozen, Roderich continued to talk:
"In the beginning, I couldn't point out why I developed these feelings for you. That didn't make sense. After all, on the surface, we're perfect opposites. However, after thinking for a while about this question, I realized that we're not so incompatible as we might seem."
…
I wish I could describe my thoughts at this time as a consistent flow of ideas. I wish I could but that's really not possible. I can't show a logical sequence of the processes going on in my mind because there wasn't one. My brain had completely crashed.
I hope you can content yourself with random pieces of thoughts flying around my mind, such as 'Am I dreaming?', 'Come on! He didn't end his engagement with Vash! That has to be a lie!', 'Hey! My feelings for him also started during his first wedding's preparations!', 'Breaking up an engagement after all the work we put into it is such a dick move!', 'Should I send him away?', 'What would have happened if I said to the doorman that he shouldn't be allowed to enter? What was his plan B?', 'Should I take seriously what he's saying?', 'Damn, I want to kiss him so, so badly that I'm about to punch a wall just to get distracted with the pain.', 'I can't let myself get close to him. Like, I SERIOUSLY can't let myself get close to him or God knows what will happen to me.'
"We may have different opinions about many things, but our tastes are still very similar. When I'm with you, I… I feel comfortable." He shook his head slightly with a small but very important smile on his face. "I feel free and, even though it's quite embarrassing to admit it, I feel truly happy. You always have been aware of my worst sides and I always was conscious of yours. Maybe it's for this reason that we have so many discussions and tease each other so much. Yet, isn't it strange that we can get along so well with all this bantering and all of our faults?"
To be fair, those last fifteen minutes were way stranger than anything else in my life.
A scared and rational part of me was still in denial. What was happening should be real for all the accounts but, at the same time, it just couldn't be real. Was there another explanation to it?
At that moment, it was as if my brain was solving a Rubik's cube. Rod's words made some sense at the same time they did not make any sense. It's complicated, I know! Heck, how do I know! But that's the truth about my thoughts at that moment.
However, even if my brain was trying to warn me, it was too late to make my overexcited heart understand and it started to get overly happy and attentive to Rod's words.
Because, you see, I could perfectly understand the sensation that Roderich had just described to me.
After all, that was what I felt for him, what I yearned he could feel for me, even knowing that it wouldn't ever happen.
"Huh…" I made an effort to say something but my tongue didn't cooperate. My mouth was hanging open and my bottom lip was moving up and down repeatedly in several attempts to articulate something. Anything!
That was no longer a matter of not knowing what to ask or to say! It was a matter of deciding what to ask or say first!
"Each time you organized my weddings, I felt that our time together was never long enough to satisfy me." Rod looked at my ceiling, making the end of his fingers touch and slightly moving his body front and backwards. His face looked again very composed as usual but I could see that he was making an effort to keep it like that. "The time passed too fast. There was still so much I wanted to share with you. Thanks to you, you big dummy, I grew discontent with all of my marriages. I started to miss something that I never missed in a relationship. When I looked at this person I had married, I simply couldn't stand the idea of staying all my life with them, when I knew that no one made the time pass as easily as it passed when we were together. Months weren't enough and I think that years wouldn't enough for me to stop longing for your companionship."
My mind was imploding.
"Er…"
Fortunately, Rod kept talking, not waiting for a better answer on my side, which was good since I was in no conditions to give it to him, anyway.
"At first, my feelings didn't have the current intensity," he claimed with dull pride, as if he was defending himself from some unfair accusation, but the blush on his face took away any intimidating effect of that expression. "They have evolved over time and became more difficult to manage. Being a perfectly rational individual, I tried to manipulate them in my favor, of course. The problem is that none of my tries to escape from the reality worked. I tried to convince myself that I only wanted your friendship and failed. I tried to convince myself that I just wanted to sleep with you and failed. Finally, when I realized I was destroying my chances to get what I really want, I got scared and realized that my actions were not being as rational as I thought," he admitted, frowning and lowering the corners of the mouth, displeased to acknowledge his mistake.
The more Roderich explained himself, the more sincere and dangerous he seemed to me. I hoped so much, so much that he was telling the truth... I was so, so terrified by the possible approach of a rebuttal of everything he had just said.
His words sounded… plausible. That was the thing messing with my head. Had the young lord thrown himself at my arms the moment I opened my door and kissed me so hard that we both ended up in the ground, I would give way less credit to the sincerity of his feelings than I was doing now.
All that moderate discourse, organized and transmitted like a weather forecast hit me way harder because that… that really seemed like the way the aristocrat would make a love confession. I mean, do you see Roderich being like "I love you so much, my dear! I can't hold these feelings anymore! Take me to your chambers!"? Yeah, neither do I!
If Rod were to confess his feelings for someone, it probably would sound more like …
"There's nothing rational in a course of actions that only caused pain and losses for the many parties involved."
That was his next line and he came to this conclusion, letting a shadow of regret cover his expression for a moment.
I knew that the pain and losses he mentioned weren't just about us so I soberly lowered my own head.
However, to my surprise, that heavy moment was easily broken. Roderich soon recovered his energy and said with a happy curve to the corners of his mouth and the warmest and softest expression I ever saw in his face, saying…
"What I should have done from the beginning seems so obvious to me now. After all, once we eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth, isn't it? It's impossible that my previous behaviour was the right one. Therefore, I can't deny the unlikely but not impossible conclusion that I will only be content when I finally feel that I properly expressed my feelings for you with all the words I've been holding for all this time. In short, let me say this: I don't want you to be my wedding planner, Gilbert Beilschmidt. That's how I felt for quite some time and I apologize for only being able to admit it now."
… If I had to point out, I would say that was the precise moment in which my heart, which had spent all this time jumping, as if it was in a trampoline, suddenly felt like it was taking a long fall from an airplane and my whole body went tense in expectation.
"I came to your apartment because I need to know if it's too late for that admission." As he said it, he finally looked straight at me and I was completely absorbed by what I found within his eyes. A mixture of determination, hope and fear shone in them. "It may be. My personality is not loveable enough to be able to sustain the affection of a person for so long. To be honest, until the night of our fight, I had constant trouble believing that you could really have such feelings for me. It was my constant dilemma. Sometimes I thought I was positive about them, but there was also times in which I saw signs that revealed to me that I was just deluding myself… It was very complicated. There were many times when I reflected on this theme, playing Erik Satie on my piano. I must say that my previous behavior is not as cold as you presume it was. If I had more than vague and questionable suspicions about your feelings for me before that night… Well, I can't ensure that I would accept them, due to my previous set of principles concerning love relationships, but I would never force the painful task of dealing with my weddings, as I ended up doing to you for lack of better judgement. I didn't repeatedly hire you for thinking that you would give me special treatment due to your feelings for me. I hired you again because, at the time, this seemed a perfectly reasonable excuse to meet you again. Honestly, after all these turbulent events, I can hardly believe that your feelings for me, still have the same depth as mine, and I can accept if that is the case, but as I said… I had to try."
"I can hardly believe….".
Hardly believe, he said.
I blinked, searching thoroughly for a single hint of irony in his face because… No, that couldn't be serious. He was telling me that he was never sure what I felt for him? Was he telling me that he still didn't really know what I felt for him now?
He always said he didn't really need his glasses but Rod definitely should get a new prescription! It was obvious he was completely blind!
He still had doubts? Was that a joke?!
After all this time, all these problems and all these misunderstandings, Rod came to tell me that HE was the one with doubts about the nature and intensity of my feelings?!
Lord, how dense could a person be?
This complete lack of notion of the young lord saved our relationship.
It reminded me that, despite his monarchical aura, Rod was practically a baby in terms of his abilities to notice another's feelings. A royal baby maybe but still a baby.
Thanks to it, I had a sudden enlightenment about the young lord's motives to act like he did all these years and the Roderich-of-my-memories and the Roderich-that-is-confessing-his-feelings-for-me-right-now began to fall into place as the two completely awkward halves that formed a single individual.
Finally, I could understand that during all this time, I gave way too much credit to Roderich's manipulation skills and not enough credit to his true feelings. He was not using me. He was hiring me and paying a high price for it (in a literal and nonliteral sense), because he was so, so blind that he thought he needed this scheme to stay close to me. He was so clueless about everything that was going on that he actually thought that my feelings could easily disappear a week after our fight and came to my apartment to make a first and last attempt to get together. Because this was the first time he had felt a little confidence in my interest in him.
With that defensive rhetoric, planned and expressed in an emotionless tone, he was broadcasting things that had no practical benefit to him. Mr. Pragmatism was confessing emotions and feelings. That was not logical, practical or convenient for him. Still, he was there.
Then, with the rapid, intense and inevitable fright of a person who steps on the air while going down the stairs, I was overcome by the realization that I had just received a legit declaration of love from Roderich Eldestein and that my concern now wasn't to question the truth of his feelings, but how to respond to them.
Yep. A love confession. From Roderich Edelstein.
A confession from a guy who six years ago had said that he didn't consider love an essential element in a relationship. A statement from a guy who wanted to marry some dude just because he was rich and stupid, a girl, just because she was his friend, and a third person just because they had "similar natures".
A confession from someone who was reluctant to even thank me for a small favor in an open manner.
For Roderich, someone whose highest praise were pretty much noncritical comments, to be expressing his feelings with such a rich set of words, in the most direct way possible… That could only mean his emotions were as real as mine.
He liked me. He seriously had it going for me. He was in love with me.
Wow… Wow!
Holy shit! That was not a joke! It was a misunderstanding! It was not a crazy dream!
Rod, that big dummy, had put an end to his engagement with his ex-fiancé and waited a week to visit me because he was afraid that my feelings for him were so easy to overcome, that he would have to resort to an abrupt confession in order to recover them.
Even though there was no guarantee of return feelings on my part, he ended a serious relationship for one that perhaps would never start.
He was prepared to be rejected and came anyway. Because he liked me. A lot.
In conclusion, Rod underestimated my feelings and I underestimated his. That's what caused our conflict. I got angry with Roderich because I thought he was just keeping me by his for the sake of self-indulgence. He was bitter about me because he believed I considered him just a customer.
By trying to avoid our own feelings, we assumed things about each other while trying to disguise the nature of our own feelings and… Well, it was not the best of combinations. Eventually, it resulted in an accumulation of frustrations and misunderstandings, and finally, in our huge fight some nights ago, due to some serious failures of communication.
I still think the biggest fault for all that shit was Rod buuuuuuut….
Hell, in the end, we really walked in circles in those six years.
Now, I could understand that the young lord had not stood beside me and allowed me to enter his person life to use me as an emotional step, in a cold and calculating way. He simply wasn't able to stay away from me or avoid the growth of our bond and emotional connection, even if that was bad news to him. Like me. Believe me when I say that I really get it. I lived all that shit as well.
The difference is that now I knew the reality of what happened between us and the true intensity of his feelings while he still didn't have the slightest notion about mine.
Come on… I maybe didn't make a stoic speech or justify my feelings with syllogisms but it was absurd for me to hear, after six years living in fear that Rod would find out how I really felt about him, that the person who I was crazy in love with still wasn't sure about my feelings.
I mean, give me a break, Rod! The suppliers from my work know about my feelings and you don't?! That was almost infuriating…!
Nah, I couldn't get angry when I looked at his face.
He seemed so nervous and insecure right now. It was as if he was ready for a downright rejection. Seeing him like this, I could only feel a deep affection for him. Really, Rod. You are special in the best and worst possible ways.
After the young lord's confession, it was my turn to repay it.
He talked about his feelings, using so many words, arguments and even a freaking timeline, and I… Now that I think about it, what I said in response to his last approach was basically a "Marry Vash already and stop pestering me!".
Eh, not the best declarations of love. I could do better, I guess.
In fact, I had to do better so that the aristocratic nerd got it into his head once and for all that I was billions of light-years away from indifference to his feelings.
Alright, Gilbert, now this is the time to display your admirable courage. Just say it to him already!
With my head hanging low and a hand behind my neck, I spoke in the most casual voice that was possible for me:
"Roderich Edelstein, you are an idiot in some aspects."
"I don't understand what you…!"
"I love you, you know."
"Oh."
Well, that wasn't embarrassing at all. Very smooth, Gilbert. Super-sexy.
Hey! To give me credit, I think my message perfectly transmitted what I was trying to say since, after receiving it, the young lord blushed in his usual discreet way and began to look at me as if vaguely lost.
"A-Ah. Hm."
"Done. There you go. I just wanted to make this clear." I crossed my arms and kept staring at the floor, puffing my cheeks. "I was angry with you, of course. Cheating is not cool. However, you corrected your mistakes on the same day and all that, so I guess it shows your character. People can get carried away in some emotional situations and make mistakes but if you had the guts to admit you were wrong… That's what matters. I was angry with you. I really was. But I never stopped… I mean, I still am…" desperately in love with you. "Uh … er … you know."
"Oh, heavens." He sighed, putting a hand over his chest. "Thank goodness."
Witnessing such a sincere reaction of relief at my words caused an involuntary fluttering in my heart.
But hold on! We could not go into the realm of pink clouds, flowers and butterflies. There was a crucial issue that needed to be resolved and the task of bringing it up was left to me.
"So…" I put my hands in the pockets of my pants and raised my eyes, meeting his. "What do we do now?"
That was the big question.