Notes: Irrelevant fact, I started this on Owen Hargreaves' birthday (GGMU!).

[02/04/16]

You never learned how to wait.

If time heals all wounds, and if it does it so well that the scars are invisible, then that does a very strange thing to a person. It is easy to forget, when you haven't seen his face in weeks, haven't kissed his mouth in years, haven't breathed his name into his mouth in so long, you can't remember what he tastes like. He used to be sweet, ripe as a peach (and God, he used to hate it when you said that, ripe as a peach), crisp, with a sweetly curved mouth and soft, creamy skin that smelled like winter.

Clocks and calendars are a thing of the past, of so many pasts, not enough presents, never the future, never ever the future. It's been five minutes since you called him, ten minutes since he said he was on his way, an hour since he last answered your message. It's been a fortnight, two days since he hasn't been over, one week, three months, six fucking years since he last told you he loved you. You know, you've counted. Your heart can take a break, it's done so before, but you swear every time it gets harder, more brittle, so easily thrown away.

So it's easy to forget that, under your gloved hands, skin has healed. There are no marks, nothing that can betray the fact that, once upon a blue moon, you knew each other. Not in the way his then girlfriend, now ex-wife, does; it's different, so very different. You knew him, and he knew you, too. He knew how you took your coffee (two cubes of sugar, one dash of milk, a sprinkle of cinnamon); you knew that, when he sleeps, he always faces North. He knew that the colour of your eyes was that of molten gold, that wearing blue was something you did for him, that love was all that was left after you took off your gloves, your make-up, all your clothes.

And love is his old watch on your thin wrist, and heavy-lidded eyes lined with sleep and the affection you once felt for each other.

And love is how he waves at you as he steps inside the old café, how his eyes grow bright for just a second, just enough for you to see it, to know it's yours.

And love is also black tea, hot, a hint of cardamom, pursed lips over cups and never again over each other.