Title: Anniversary
Rating: K/PG
AN: written for the Tumblr Blainchel Anniversary celebration... putting it here too mostly because I don't want to lose it.
After eight years of friendship, he finally told her everything. The day was historically ordinary. It wasn't a holiday, a birthday, or any kind of day with cause for personal celebration. They weren't even doing anything to incite the kind of excitement his confession brought about. He'd just simply started speaking, about what seemed to be nothing in particular until the words "and that's when I realized I was in love with you" tumbled from his lips and her knees went weak. What followed was a story about how, through the years, he had slowly fallen deeper and deeper for her until no one else - boy or girl - could make him feel half as alive as she did when she so much as smile at him. He was completely, hoplessly, lost in love with her.
Nothing in the world could have surprised her more. He could have confessed to serial murders and she would have been less shocked. He sat on the grass next to her, rubbing the back of his neck self-consciously and she tried to think what she could possibly say that would even come close to all he had revealed. She didn't like to think she was jaded, but she had never considered her feelings for him to be anything but platonic and she couldn't expect that to change in one afternoon. Not even at his say so and he was famous in her life for being able to talk her into or out of anything.
Need was evident in his eyes and even as she explained to him she needed time to figure herself out, she knew he deserved more from her. But he didn't pressure her, never giving into that urgency she knew lay only under the surface. That was the thing she'd always appreciated most about him, his patience. Even when the world was spinning on its heels, he was always waiting for her on the other side, hand outstretched to pull her through. He was an important piece of her life, of that she was certain as she kissed him goodbye on the cheek.
Interestingly enough, he didn't bring the subject up again the next time they saw each other, or the next, or even the next time after that. When she asked him why, he simply responded, "I'm used to waiting on you; a few extra weeks won't kill me" and continued sorting his way through the clearance rack. She found herself smiling about that even hours later and if he could make her happy with such a simple comment, she could only imagine what it might feel like if she gave his deeper feelings a chance.
Vegetable lasgna would be as romantic as he ever got, he joked over the phone as they planned their first official date. She explicitly stated that she didn't want an overthought, overinvolved evening. She wanted something that would feel like them, that would feel natual and comforting because she was already nerve-wracked over the implications of what a date with him meant to their changing relationship. It was out of fear, she admitted, that they could be making a mistake and but if she could feel like herself on their date, then maybe she would be able to stay out of her own head and let her heart run whatever course it was on. She owed him that, at the very least.
Eventually, one date turned into two and weeks turned into months and it was a wholly unobtrusive Thursday when she blurted out "I love you" during the pivotal scene of whatever movie they'd decided to see at the revival theatre. Her cheeks flushed a deep red, thankfully hidden from him in the dark. He took her hand and brought their intertwined fingers to his lips and she could feel his lips form the words as he whispered them back. She had to fight back tears. Having gone so long without hearing those three little words from him, she didn't realize how much she'd missed hearing them, how much her heart needed them.
Rushing into things was a speciality of hers, but she found herself holding back even though she was sure she was in love with him in a way she never thought she would be. Her fears weren't for herself, but rather for him. His feelings had grown over the years, his feelings for her were secure and perhaps it was selfish to take advantage of that, but she was terrified that if she were to take the next natural step and give all of herself away to him, she would destroy him if her feelings ever changed. If she ever came to mean more to him than he meant to her, she wasn't sure she could live with the guilt and the pain that would come with having to break his heart.
Still, it was another couple of months before she realized just how deeply she had fallen for him, finally understanding what he'd meant when he said it was a slow drown. She didn't even realize the water was over her head until he left, door slamming behind him over a fight she couldn't even remember starting. All she knew was the air had left her lungs and she was choking on her own tears as she tried to imagine a future without him in it. She couldn't, it was impossible. She would sooner stop living than try to muddle through a life without him. She was completely, hopelessly, lost in love with him and nothing she could ever do would change that now.
A peace settled over her like nothing she'd ever known in her life as she lay next to him in his bed. The summer night air drifting through his window was enough to keep her warm, but her bare skin was still speckled with gooseflesh. The memory of his strong and gentle hands trailing down her spine, dancing across her ribs, teasing up her thighs, kept her awake long after he's unwillingly sucummbed to sleep. It had been the single most perfect experience of her life, rivaled only by her first night performing on a real Broadway stage. It was as if she were awestruck; she couldn't help marvelling at how different it felt with him – that was the benefit of being in love she supposed, but even in the past, she hadn't felt as close to her other lovers as she did to him. It was as if that unnamed, longed for, missing piece the stars whispered and sang of existed for the first time and it had been given to them to share.
Really, when she looked back on it, she could see how everything in thier lives had led them to each other. She never believed much in coincidences but she certainly believed in fate and the more time she spent with him, the more she was convinced she was meant for him all along. How she had been so blinded to him, she would never understand. No amount of excuses and explanation would make up the time she had missed with him, though she had to admit they probably wouldn't have made it out of high school if they're realized then that they were meant to fall in love. Who knows if they would have been ready for it then, with everything and everyone else that could have come between them, but they were ready now and that made all the difference.
Years passed. Houses got bigger, cars faster, stage lights brighter, but their loves stayed the same, true and unfaltering. She could no longer tell up from down, only that she was immersed in the greatest life she could ask for, in the greatest love with her best friend. He was beyond her soul mate, more than her other half. She couldn't properly describe even to herself what he meant to her. She just knew she would spend the rest of her life trying to come up with the right words and maybe one day, she would be able to say them the way he had said them to her. One day she would be able to tell him everything, for no particular reason at all except to see him smile and say the words that always sent her heart into a tailspin: I love you.
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And as always, feel free to leave any prompts or ideas you have; I'd love to take a crack at them.