Author's Note: While there is no excuse for my absence or the lack of coherence in this piece, I can only tell you it was structured at strange moments in the past few months and that, at last, I have nothing to say for how it ends.

[08/29/16]

You were meant to be loved harder.

The first thing he notices about her is that she's beautiful, more than he could've hoped for from his friend's distorted, often exaggerated descriptions. But she has beautiful red hair (natural! she insists), and slightly golden skin that makes his fingers tingle as he imagines himself brushing them, so very lightly, over her tan shoulders. Her eyes look like rubies under the setting sun and he tells her thus, making her blush a furious crimson that clashes horribly with her hair. He laughs, looking up at her from behind a curtain of dark lashes and wonders why it couldn't have been this easy, with her.

"It's funny, how these things happen, right?"

No.

"Yes," he laughs, holding her hand briefly. "It is."

"I wanted to hate you," she admits with a laugh. "Just to spite him, you know?"

He hides his smile behind his glass, drowns it in white wine before thinking, I hated myself, too.

"He has that effect on people."

"God, he really does. I hate him, sometimes."

He nods, thankful despite his words, humbled despite his actions. He was but a common link between them, a fixed point of encounter for something that otherwise would've never happened, could've never because his heart had never been in it to begin with. But however sparce his attention, Taichi's heart is always in the right place and he'd always want the best for his friends.

"You are—," and he leans closer over the table, brushing a strand of short red hair behind her ear.

You are not her, you are not her, you are not her.

"—so dear to me."

It's nothing short of amazing how she fits right into his little family; even Natsuko likes to have her over for dinner. They have been dating for over a year now, just shy of sixteen months and she is everything he had never imagined she would be. Except the one thing she is not, which is the only thing he wants her to be and the only thing he needs her to never become.

Sora takes a moment, bites down on a thin crimson-tinted lip and leans forward, for a kiss.

"I love you."

Listen. I love you, Yamato. Okay?

The lines blur for a moment and he can't — he can't breathe, so he counts backwards from ten until her lips stop tasting like someone else's name and the heartbreak that story left him with. This is now, and that was then and he has long since learned not to blend those two because his mother told him when you love do it soft and do it kind, but she had never warned him against this. Nothing could prepare him for the searing melancholy she would leave him with or how empty he feels after giving her everything and realising it can never be enough.

So his hand encloses around hers and he brings it to his lips, which tremble against her warm, golden skin.

"I know."

I love you too. You know that, don't you? Don't you, Mimi?