Hello, it is Wednesday and I am back with a new chapter! I very much remember writing this chapter back in 2021. It's no secret that Justin is heavily inspired by the musician James Bay and one of the nice things that he did when the country was locked down in 2020 was that he did a number of livestreams over on Instagram Live, including guitar lessons! During one at Christmas, he performed a song that he still hasn't released called Here I Am and from the moment I heard it, not only did it remind me very much of the dynamic of Mary and Freddie in Bohemian Rhapsody but it made me think of Justin and his teenage girlfriend, Eleanor, too. A couple months from that after a lot of note writing, I wrote this chapter! Two years later, it's still relevant so after a lot of editing, here it is! This story tells the tale of Justin and Eleanor departing for good. I hope you enjoy a bittersweet story!
Disclaimer: Justin is struggling with coming to terms with his sexuality in this story so if that is upsetting for you, give it a miss!
It is often said that silence is deafening. And Justin was shown that more so than ever in his as he sat across from his girlfriend, silence being the only thing that echoed between them. He looked over at Eleanor and swallowed with the same noiselessness. As his eyes searched for her, he wondered if he screwed his eyes up hard enough, could he see her thoughts present themselves in sketches above her head. And yet the truth was, he had to focus his gaze to his knees because he could not for a second bare what she might be thinking.
It was his turn to speak. It was his turn to use a knife to slice the thickness in the air. But no medals would be awarded to him.
Teeth chewing on the inside of his own mouth like it was the tastiest thing in the world, Justin continually stared down at his lap rather than across at the girl that he loved. He wondered what on earth he was going to say. And he wondered how he was going to say something, let alone everything.
After the sound of silence deafened and engulfed them both and the length of it seemed to never end, it was suddenly brought to a halt by the noise of someone's throat. It did not come from Justin. But his eyelashes twitched immediately when the sound dawned on him too.
"Are you actually going to say something…?" wondered Eleanor, biting on the inside of her mouth only once before running a hand through the longest part of her hair, her fingers trembling as though she had been in the snow for hours. "You can't invite me over here and then not…"
She had trailed off, legs stretching out in front of her in spite of the tension inside the rest of her. And although she was pointing out her boyfriend's hushedness, she found herself in the exact same boat.
She shook her head to herself once just like she had nibbled inside her own cheek and then she watched Justin from an angle. As her neck sloped and her hair tickled under her jaw, she found a spec of solace in rubbing her forehead.
Eleanor's fingers grappled at and then massaged her own forehead and temples, still agonising over her own thoughts. Like Justin, she didn't speak of the musings running through her mind. But like she had hinted, she was not the one who needed to open up.
"It's hard…" Justin's voice cut through the silence that threatened to loom once more. The sound also shuddered Eleanor's fingers to a halt, her nails beginning to lightly dig in between where her eyebrows and bridge of her nose met. In a tone like a frosty breeze, he insisted and blocked her from his vision for good. "It's hard."
Touch departed from Eleanor's forehead. In just one second, her fingers had lightly balled into fists. In one second more, she had found her voice while her boyfriend's had not, instead shutting his eyes.
"Life is hard." She countered. That harshness, that coldness was fleeting. Almost as though she didn't believe the words that had tumbled out of her lips to be her own and the sound was foreign to her, Eleanor's lips pressed into a tight line.
Her fingers clenched together once more but not with the same energy that time. Her voice couldn't have been her own. It was not the same for Justin. He recoiled even more in his seat than he had been doing before.
Perhaps to get some warmth to his icy digits which were a part of his equally frozen body, his pale fingers fell in between his thighs and tucked there. Justin had hardly been able to look at his girlfriend before but now that she had said those words, he knew that he definitely wouldn't at all.
Eleanor could read him like a book. For good and for bad. She saw him nearly sink back against his seat and it encouraged her to add more words, ones that were more familiar to her and in a tone that felt more like her own.
"What… What part is hard…?" she had to wonder, the sigh in her own voice being taken over by a swallow. She gulped away the sand in her throat. She reclaimed words that she perhaps wanted to say – longed to say – needed to say. "It's hard for you to say…? Or it's hard for me to hear…?"
Eleanor's head swung from side to side, another part of her brown locks becoming untucked.
Justin had forced himself to look at her when she started her words once more, already acknowledging that she must have some level of remorse over her steely tone to continue speaking even though she was correct.
It was he who was meant to be doing the talking.
When it came to the second part of her words, however, Justin's gaze floated away like a cloud all over again. He had been so certain at one point. He had known what he had to do and knew what he had to say and the both of them deserved at least that.
But now that it was time? Well, let's just say he didn't seize the moment quite as greatly as he took to a crowd in a crowded bar corner.
His lips pressed together in a similar firm line to his girlfriend's. Unlike usual, no dimple appeared. My guess in hindsight is that it didn't have the energy to blossom in that kind of moment.
"Both…" Justin's participation in the couple's conversation was initially small but at least it was something. Eleanor's mouth clamped shut. Her hands travelling to her own knees, her boyfriend's ones remained stuck in between his thighs to keep warm as his eyes fluttered shut another time. "But I think that you deserve to know who I am…" His temple beat its own pulse.
The fire crackled in the corner of the living room and only this lent it's sounds to the soundtrack of Justin and Eleanor's interaction. But then, an exhale came from the girl, and she did so with such unintentional gusto that she could've blown the fire right out.
Copying his position of his hands tucked between his thighs, Eleanor's own hands fell there as she drew back. She knew in her heart why Justin had called her over to talk when their relationship had started to dry up all the more undeniably. But to hear it? To hear it and to suspect it and know in your heart that you are right was a different matter.
Her eyes threatened to spill, and it wasn't the growing suffocating heat of the room. She occupied her vision with her kneecaps still in her school skirt. Somehow, her eyes remained open. They longed to shut, and they longed to shut for so long. Almost for eternity so she didn't have to face the truth that had wanted to stare her right down for years.
Yet they fixed down. They fixed like a statue. A hugely all-encompassing statue. It was this moment that Eleanor knew. Justin was going to tell her things that didn't bode well for their relationship. It was time to face up to the beast.
She knew she must listen.
"I guess I always felt that I wasn't like other people my own age…" he began and at once when Eleanor somehow bravely managed to flicker her brown hued gaze between her bare kneecaps and her ever paling boyfriend, she could tell his voice appeared unnatural to him. Nevertheless, words escaped that should've been set free a very long time ago. "This has been a long journey for me, El…"
A sweeping silence happened again. A pause.
The sound of a shortened version of her name tumbling out from between the lips of her love would've caused shivers to take over her spine and her kneecaps to buckle at one point. But at that point and during that moment and on that day, it didn't draw her in.
Eleanor looked away, one hand untucking itself from her legs and running across her face and forehead before it swooped into her hair. The way that she winced spoke volumes. She was getting nearer. They were getting nearer. They were getting closer and closer to the end as Justin crept closer and closer to saying what he knew he needed to say.
"I never knew what it was…" he continued, his eyes still fixing down rather than anywhere else. His fingers twitched in between his thighs but still remained. The whites of his eyes appeared like glossy eggshells against the dull glow of the fire. He found his voice while singing always. Now was time to discover it in a different way. "But now… Now it's becoming clear…" his words jumbled inside his mouth. "Now I… Now…"
He tried to find his voice; he really did. He tried to say the words, he truly did.
Peculiarly and quite heartbreakingly upon my future reflection, he started to manage to look at his girlfriend right as he began stammering, his eyes becoming saucers against the Kanto evening that was becoming night. And in spite of everything that they had tried to tackle together and apart and in spite of everything that it was not working, Eleanor couldn't deny the instinct to stop her boyfriend's fretting.
Eleanor had to put an end to his agony. Even if she was feeling the roaring fire burning in the pit of her stomach.
"D-Don't… Don't…" she said and I'm sure that it was Justin's first thought that his girlfriend didn't want to hear the words that would most certainly speed up their parting. He was shown a different outcome when she rubbed her eyes with the fingers and thumb of just one hands of hers. An exhalation of breath like a feather could be heard. "You don't have to speak what is perfectly clear to us both…"
Contrasting her gentler sighing, her tone sounded a little more like cut glass, her jaw clenching to prevent her teeth from chattering. Though she was closest to the fire, her temperature was rapidly falling.
Justin felt the same way. He could also feel heat rising in his stomach and travelling upward towards his chest at the initial thought that she was shutting him up like she had done once before when he let out a small confession of his turmoil – a label that potentially suited him.
However, the more that he halted, and he did some listening even though she was meant to be the one doing the most of that, he saw the way that his girlfriend withdrew all over and that time, she couldn't put a stop to nor hide her teeth from chattering.
Against the dull glow of the fire, she looked as though she was going to be sick. That's how he knew. That's how he knew that she knew. And that's how he knew that she felt there was no point in him actually saying the words.
What good would that do? They were obviously true. There was no point spelling out things that had finally become undeniable fact.
Even so, a small part of him almost wanted him to actually say them. To see if he could. He had scarcely spoken them aloud to anybody before. He wondered if at one point they would come bursting out of him, like a torrent of truth he hadn't realised he had been masking since he was a little boy.
But then again, another, bigger part of him knew that was why he enjoyed performing so much. Not that anybody knew it, but those were the moments that he could truly be himself. All of himself. Even if the songs had nothing to do with expressing that part of his life. He shone on the stage because he channelled all of that inner light. All of that inner fear. And all of that inner truth too.
Truth is a funny matter, isn't it? Looking back in retrospect not too long after I hear this story for the first time, I still find myself pondering that notion. There's so many points of view and perspectives in the world that truth can be hard to find.
What is it? Is it reality? Surely not. That can be equally distorted as well. Perhaps truth was peace. Truth was individual.
Regardless, one word and one word alone that had described Justin longer than he could remember. He was not hemmed into that one word, granted. But he felt as though it covered him like an umbrella. It was the right one for him.
He wanted to say it to Eleanor. But she didn't need him to say it to her. No matter the word he chose, if it had the same impact as all of the other emotions he had been dealing with lately, it most certainly pushed them towards the last few moments of their unification.
Eleanor appeared to not want to say any words at all. As she sat across from Justin and she sunk even lower into her seat and tried to make sense of everything – everything that he had said and everything that he had not said as well as everything that she remembered and everything that she sensed – a hollow silence captured her all over again.
"It's clear to me that that's not the only element that has been breaking us down…" he spoke even if she would not and immediately, he received her attention from across the room. That doe eyed glance would've once turned him to butter. But in that moment, it was steely and rigid. It spoke its own truth. Justin persisted though he slumped back like even he knew he was clutching at straws. "I… I had to tell you my confusion hasn't gone away… I had to take the time…"
All the while that Justin spoke these words, Eleanor somehow managed to not look away from him. And it was as she did this that his mouth became sand even more than ever before. If she was managing to look straight at him and see him for who he was then why was she silent? Why had she been silent for so long?
Justin didn't understand. This was what she wanted, wasn't it? It was true that it had been him to call her over and offer to talk and get everything off his chest. But it had been her who wanted this, hadn't it?
She had always coaxed it out of him in every way. When they were intimate together, she poked him, probed him, and tried to make him confess that when his eyes fell shut, he was thinking of people that were not her. When he had various tabs open on his laptop computer while doing schoolwork, she made him think that he was guilty of having no photos of her that he clicked shut when she approached.
She made him say something once before. So, he knew that he had to again, and he owed it to her and their relationship to be honest. But why was she so silent now? She had urged the truth. The truth was there. And now what? She didn't want it.
Justin let out a sharp sigh to contrast his slumped composure and that was all he said with regards to all of those thoughts.
"You deserved to know that I had changed my mind…" he started again, and that gaze honed on his all the more before it finally fell away for good. Sitting right next to the fire and with her legs drawing closer to her again, she looked a little bit alarmed. Eleanor hoped his words hadn't purposely been ambiguous. "El…" That one coming out from his parted lips spoke volumes of his true intention. "You deserve to know who I am…"
A falter. A pause. A flicker. A movement of the mouth came from Eleanor.
A… smile? No, surely not. No, that could not have been and even I am doubtful as I look back in hindsight.
There are many reasons why the corner of a mouth can quirk upwards. A reflex. A habit. A pain. It had to be one of those things of course. There was no reason and there was no explanation as to why she could possibly smile there and then and in that moment.
Justin watched as his girlfriend stopped sitting so slinked back in her chair by the fire and she reached down for her empty glass that had contained wine, holding it in her lap and focusing all of her vision and attention there.
I say empty and I was told that this was indeed the case. But nonetheless, Eleanor stared at it like not only it was full of a smooth, red, intoxicating liquid but it was filled with memories of relationship she had shared with Justin since they were young teenagers.
His brow had begun to furrow when he too tried to work out if she was smiling or not. Then, he had grown hopeful when she started to move, thinking that she was finally reacting to him.
The truth was a kick in the teeth!
Any glint of hope in his orbs vanished away like the fire snapped up, ate, and engulfed the wood that had been placed there especially. He didn't understand. If it were her own truthfulness that she was looking for then she wouldn't find it at the bottom of the glass.
All Justin could do when he was on the end of some silent treatment was react in ways that he knew best. It was in these moments that intuition took over. For good or for bad. He was then driven by instinct and instinct caused him to at last move away from his own seat.
He didn't purposefully creep closer to Eleanor because he wanted to be nearer to the crackling fire in the approaching night of the Morgan Household. The closer that Justin edged to his girlfriend, and he went down onto his knees, brushing his own hair from his own eyes before taking the glass out of her hold and encouraging her to clasp his fingers instead, the easier that he fathomed her silence.
It was never nice to feel unwanted.
"El…" he tried again. For the first time in a long time, though she first of all tried to wriggle her digits away from his clasping hand, when she hesitantly looked down at him with those saddened eyes of hers, she looked at him with the same innocence of the early days of their relationship. Maybe his tone of voice had changed just for her to recognise. "You… You're still the itch I can't scratch. It's still me and you… It's… It's still you…"
It was fortunate that Eleanor and Justin had been together for a sizeable chunk of time in their young lives at that point. She recognised that he was trying to express his unconditional love for her. In his own way, Justin was trying to express his unconditional love.
That was part of the problem. Why couldn't he just say it? Like with other things, why did he have to beat around the bush and why couldn't he just say it? Granted, he hadn't always been like that. His fifteen-year-old self had gone into the relationship with an indelible and giddy amount of love that had charmed and won her over.
The reason that that changed became clear in the next moment when Eleanor finally found words to say.
"Why do you have to talk like that…?" she winced, and that time that she flinched, it was down to the performance of what she was hearing rather than the words that had been said. It was Justin's turn to falter as his touch threatened to slip away from Eleanor's. Her fingers had settled inside his, but she was shaking her head tiredly and continually. "If you must lie, then lie normally…"
Justin's fingers clasping hers threatened to fall away. But then they squeezed more securely. He found his voice quicker and more faultlessly than he had in quite a long time.
"I'm not lying…" he told her. His lack of eye contact might have suggested otherwise to Eleanor, but the truth was, he was looking down at the way that their fingers looked together.
Both their pale and piano players fingers brushed up against each other's, the same digits that had tentatively reached for each other at the age of fifteen. That same touch that had grown bolder as time passed and eventually pressed together, palms touching as they experienced new things for the first time together.
A sigh from Eleanor spoke exactly what she thought about her boyfriend's response. But she did not bother to combat it with her own words. Nor did she pull her fingers away from being so close to his either. She simply let them reside there. Loosely. Limply. They relinquished. Almost hibernating.
Then their digits did the speaking while their tongues did not. Each and every pad of their fingers touched up against the mirror that was the other person's opposite hand. Eventually, as their middle fingers began to entwine around each other's and the corner of Justin's mouth threatened to elevate as he forgot exactly what really was going on between them, Eleanor had to give her mouth a chance to do some of the talking as well as her hands.
At first, she mused, her own eyes fixed towards where she and Justin were linked. Hypnotized by the sight, maybe she was memorising it because she knew it was one of the last times.
"What is it that makes you so certain that you still want this…?" she wondered in another whisper and immediately, Justin noticed the way she said this rather than me. The reaction on his face was as quick as the way his eyes finally wandered to look at his face.
Expressions spoke everything before words had to. The pad of his middle finger tracing the pad of hers, his head grew tilted, and his eyebrows drew closer together.
His dimple at last made an appearance, in observational displeasure. But he hurried along, forgoing telling her words that he would have preferred to say, that she was still the thorn in his tired side and one he was reluctant to lose.
"You believe in me…" he informed her and without gauging what she might be thinking – whether she expressed it on her own face or not – he continued what he knew what he needed to say when he understood how his first words sounded. "And I believe in you… 'Cos there's a lot to believe in."
Justin smiled. Justin did smile that time, both of the corners of his mouth lifting upwards. The dimple was again elusive though. And that time as well, it was his touch that disappeared into Eleanor's, all prompted by him.
She managed not to follow suit when she saw his smile. She still portrayed a line when she heard his words. She even managed not to succumb when she felt his gaze. Her own gaze dropped to their fingers again. She didn't drop his fingers. She didn't encourage them to move elsewhere.
In actuality, it was her touch to move elsewhere before they moved to tentatively pinch under his chin with her thumb and forefinger, the presence of her fingers lingering there for just a second. Her gaze couldn't linger on anything at all for barely a second.
"I believe that you're crazy…" she said, and her smile finally came. However, it was of course not the smile that Justin was hoping for, neither was it the next best thing. And following that, she did unclasp her fingers entirely away from any part of him and she sunk back into her seat.
That was that. That was evidently that. From the way that her fingers at one point couldn't help but reach out to touch a part of his face, it was clear that a string bound her to him as much as it was binding him to her.
Still, it was hard to know which out of the two of them had their guard up the most. And who had started it? No matter the case, Eleanor had her walls high in the sky on that day. And even though he was saying things that he would've said a long time ago and with the same sincerity and charm, they just weren't cutting it in the same way.
To think that their relationship could survive was crazy. And thinking that they could make it work in spite of one glaring similarity between them was barely a scratch less than crazy, El believed.
"I know that you won't understand… Nobody could…" Justin began, and I suspect that this surprised her. Surely her almost rejection of him was going to send him slumping back to his seat, wasn't it? Apparently not. He didn't fight for things that didn't want to have him in their corner. But I supposed he sensed that the thread between them had not yet been entirely severed. "If you feel the same way as me, it doesn't have to be the way that we initially feared…"
It's a shame that Justin and Eleanor couldn't have communicated from the beginning in the same way that they did in the next moment. It would've saved a lot of trouble. It would have saved a lot of time. And of course, pain as well.
The wordless communication and communication with gestures could've saved them. But then again, I guessed, that they weren't meant to be saved. Only savoured once again when they were both ready.
Justin responded to the mere weary, querying look that his girlfriend shot him with a bit of light taking over his eyes. It wasn't the glow from the continual lit fire. It wasn't the light of love shining in his eyes once more. It was hope. But it was the kind of heart-breaking and chest burning hope that led even the person speaking to know in their aching heart that it was just no good. It was just no use.
"I'm not saying that you should ignore what we've both known for a while…" he tried again and the way that his cheeks possessed the redness that was burning him up from the inside made it seem like he was lying that time. He swallowed roughly. Even the flame of Justin's hope was dwindling fast. "But… But maybe you could just trust that when I'm with you it's because I want to be with you, and I do only have eyes for you…"
The swollen blush of his cheeks grew ever more with time, but I feel in my heart that some of it was love pouring out for Eleanor. However, he was not a fool. She was even less of a fool. She could hear the pitch of his tone rising and the tightness of his throat becoming all the more apparent.
Who was he fooling? He couldn't fool himself, let alone her. And speaking her mind just like she always did, she did not for a second stop herself from shaking her head and countering his words. The glint in her eyes was sadness. Sadness for the situation and sadness for the minuscule hope they shared disguised as an infinite number of it.
"How can I trust you when you've lied to me since the day that we met…?" she retaliated in the least aggressive way that anyone could. Still, her words cut, and they cut deep. She moved in her chair all over again and she tried to reach for her empty wine glass once more.
But Justin moved it away before she could even properly lean, let alone actually fill her hands with the sensation of the cool glass. His eyes pricked like a shard of that same glass had been maliciously flung into it. His cheeks became the exact same shade of the liquid that had once filled it.
I doubt that he was bothered about the gulping sound as he swallowed. He had to defend himself. And he had to insist.
"I haven't lied to you…" it was his turn for his tone to come out foreign and as well as this, it came out hardened like the dense material of the fireplace that was looming near them. He heard how his own voice sounded and he knew he was coarse, but he didn't apologise. He instead sighed and moved onto the next thing. The next truth. "I… I just didn't know… I still don't for certain… But I know enough… And I'm telling you now…"
The further that Justin got into his words, the further away he got from any potential hardness decorating his eyes as well as his tone of voice. The more that his gaze lingered on his girlfriend's even though she longed to look down into the glass that she was not holding, the wider that it got. The glassier that it got as well.
A second swallow came, less obvious than before. Nonetheless, it's funny how we begun this story with Justin not wanting his girlfriend to look at him out of the fear of what she might start to think when she gazed upon his face. But in that moment, he was almost willing her to look at him. He was willing her to look right at him and see him clearly.
He didn't do anything to encourage her gaze in that direction. He didn't prompt her with words. He didn't prompt her with touch. His careful yet clumsy hands did not clasp around her face and give her the desire to look right at him back.
Instead, he waited. And he was probably regretful of his silent wish when she did look at him and she did reply to more of what she felt. He shouldn't have a single hope up when the edge of a smile formed on her lips.
"Well… Now I think that you should go…" Instead of deflating like a balloon when he felt the punch to the stomach of these words, he managed to resist moving an inch. He saw his girlfriend's face with his own one like a crumpled piece of paper and with half-squinted eyes in the low-lit room. Somehow, he still listened. "There's nothing left for us here."
Eleanor told Justin. I'm sure that more than anything he wanted to scoff. He probably wanted to groan, and he probably wanted to pull at the roots of his hair, and he probably wanted to scream. I'm not sure if he wanted to cry. Maybe he strangely wanted to laugh.
No matter the desire and no matter what he wanted, he remained fixed. He remained stable. He remained careful. His change of face did all of the talking before his lips did. The corner of his mouth quirked up for a different reason. This paired with the scrunch of his nose made it very clear exactly what he was thinking.
"I don't want to go…" he mumbled in a voice like a humming radio. He couldn't look at her that time as he said these words, but he was going to after he was through with them. He really was. But he wasn't given the chance to.
While Justin had managed to ignore any sort of desire within himself to react in any way outside the one that he offered his girlfriend, she didn't manage to keep her cool nearly as much. I can't say that I blamed her. They were facing the sort of problems that people in their mature adulthood would face and even do an even worse job than the two of them were managing to do.
Out of nowhere, Eleanor's tone of voice suddenly matched the fire in the corner of the room.
"It's always what you want, isn't it?!" she snapped towards Justin. Other members of the household had to have heard. I never got the chance to ask. But I was certain of it.
Before the girl with embers in her eyes could stop herself, that usually soft and harmless, intelligent gaze became full of harm. It directed itself right towards Justin, her cheeks flushing as if she had been caught in the fire that was still burning.
Justin found it natural to copy that heat. When it came to her, he fought fire with fire.
Evidently done with kneeling on the ground and having all his cards on the table, he stood up to his full height and loomed down at his girlfriend. As his long and narrow legs sprang him into action, his Adam's apple bobbed in his throat and a worded response bounced into action as well.
"No! But this is what I want so how could I for a minute properly lie to you?!" he retaliated. He hadn't intended to address being called a liar previously but like it sometimes did, it came out within that moment as well. His throat stopped bobbing, but he could feel hotness beginning to creep along and prickle his neck like was happening to his cheeks. He took a breath to compose himself. The heat of truth remained even if the heat of frustration quelled itself. "I'm telling you; I still want you… In spite of everything… This is what I want…"
Justin ran quite the big risk by telling Eleanor what he wanted when she had only just been accusing him of being greedy and selfish. But that was Justin. There and then, that was Justin. Going in between telling the truth and dodging it within himself. Being so utterly and overwhelmingly honest with his lyrics but taking such a long time with getting there with who he was.
That was who he was.
Almost in equal measures if not more as when he told Eleanor who exactly he was, he was on his knees and his last card was down. It was agony to him why she was taking it so badly. For the first time and for a very real first time, he was beginning to realise the same things as her.
They were nearing the end.
"Well, maybe I don't want to be your in spite of everything, have you thought about that…?" she bought any thought of his to an end by speaking her own mind. Mirroring what was being presented to her from him looming from above, she got real with him as well. Eleanor's eyes grew deer-like and glossy against the February night. "I want you to mean it…"
Justin looked deep into his girlfriend's eyes for as long as she let him. In just those couple of seconds, his mind skipped and danced through everything that they had shared. Their young love. Their euphoria. It had never really been a seamless relationship. But it was worth it. By God, to Justin it was worth it.
He thought the hardest thing that he ever was going to have to do was tell his girlfriend the truth about who he was before figuring out together how they were going to be together in spite of it all. But now he saw. Now he saw it. The hardest thing in his life was going to be presenting himself to the person he loved the most and her telling him that they should end things.
Justin didn't exactly blame her. No, he didn't blame her at all. He didn't want her to be in that relationship if she didn't want to be. He didn't want her to have to deal with how complicated it had been. It had been complicated. He felt like it was all his fault.
For the last split second as he gazed into her eyes, all he could think about was how awful he felt for what he had done to her. But fortunately, or unfortunately, his remorseful and emotional gaze was taken from Eleanor as the insisting that he truly had meant his words. Which he had.
He just didn't know his expression was speaking it for him then and there.
"And I mean it…" Eleanor tried to begin firmly but the contorting of her throat and the flushed decoration of the bridge of her nose lead me to believe that the way in which her boyfriend had looked into her eyes was equally as challenging and gut twisting as it had been for him. "Please… J-Just please…" she begged. And as she did this, it was this that made Justin decide for good that he could not pain her anymore. No matter how much he needed her to know that he did love her. "Let… Let us depart with grace at least."
Her words did come out as a wisp of air, but I gather that even if this had not been the case, Justin would've heard them that way anyway. He heard these words and his body reacted for them. Most clearly of all, his eyes reacted to them.
They had been glossier and wetter than they had ever been so close to a fire, and they darted around the room, unsure where to look. His first instinct was to look to the door, where he and their relationship was being shown.
But it really is true from Justin's point of view that once he and Eleanor had an invisible string that bound them for always. And this was shown from the way that although he wanted to do the gentlemanly thing and walk away, he didn't want to do the cowardly thing and walk away. He also didn't want to do the cowardly thing and not show the truth of his heart at least once more.
A sniff escaped from him which caught Eleanor off guard. As she rose to her feet to figure her exit towards the door herself, she fixed her gaze towards her feet. But when Justin looked to her almost as soon as he looked away again, her gaze rose upwards and met a continual stare of his as he stood above her, barely a metre in front of her too.
His height had never unnerved her. Maybe it surprised her when they met those years ago and she had been new to his classroom and shared a desk which his long legs sprawled out underneath while they completed their schoolwork together. But it never unnerved her.
Not that she hardly ever spoke it, but it always filled her with great comfort to feel her neck crane upwards and to meet the kind-hearted gaze of the first person that she had ever loved.
She couldn't stop those same old familiar feelings from taking over the middle of her belly when he looked at her even on that day. But then all of that came crashing down and ate her up from the inside out with what happened next.
Showing how clung to her he was in spite of everything – in spite of his determination to walk away when he was shown the door – before he turned his back on her for good, he not only turned his body towards hers but brought his closer to hers.
His great height leaning down and his flat, slim chest merging with hers, his innocent yet hungry touch clung onto her and as he hugged her, he began to press slow, deep kisses to the nape of her neck. She exhaled sharply straight away.
However, contrary to a minuscule second thought that led Justin to believe that he was going to pushed away, her hands reached for and grabbed at him equally as much as he was doing to her. As well as the fire of the pain of their departure that was going to happen in the next few seconds, this fuelled Justin all the more.
But it fuelled him in a tender way rather than desiring. His kisses on her neck remained precise and slow as they trailed up towards her ear, savouring that sensation and not wanting to break apart from it. He stifled a sob if a sob was ever going to come. He felt sadness. He felt a level of sadness he hadn't felt before. But also, a need to get out everything that he felt once and for all.
Eleanor clung to him in equal measure, one arm tightly wrapped around him and the other loosely hooked. She started to feel the kisses deepen and quicken in pace as they started to go along her jaw before intending to eventually reach her lips.
But, before Justin's affection and Justin's goodbye could actually get there, she had to put a stop to it. It was her who let out the choking noise. Her hands pushed away his body as her body resisted him as well.
"You… You need to go now…" Eleanor told him, her touch growing rigid and firm, and she insisted on pushing him away, managing to keep this up even though her legs had turned to jelly with each and every one of his previous kisses, let alone after hearing the devastated noise that she let out.
More than anything, Justin wanted to utter her name and he wanted to shut his eyes and frown and go back to kissing if that was what she wanted. He couldn't do this though because before he had any inclination to just peck one more kiss against her, he felt the firmness of her touch.
He couldn't deny this. He wouldn't push her. He couldn't pull himself away from her. But he wouldn't push her when she wanted their path to split. Certainly not on that night. He would wonder if he had pushed too hard or too little during the truly silent hours of the night. But in that hour, he let her call the shots. And he let her end things.
Justin's sigh was a response to a sob as she stopped letting his body press so firmly against hers. But despite how she stopped this part of them from uniting together, his torso was still bent, and his frame was still leaning towards her.
And as the two of them tried to psyche themselves up into saying a proper goodbye, though they were both so physically close that they could hardly make out each other's features at all, they looked at each other. They looked right at each other, their gazes probably memorising each part of how the other looked, in the good times and in the bad times.
The both of them couldn't believe that their gaze in a classroom all those years ago had ended up like this. But what could they do about it? And at least they fought to be together. Even if they hadn't fought enough.
"This is my house though…" Justin finally replied to Eleanor's words, and he did so with a level of hurt taking over his expression as he still didn't look away from the close proximity of her face. His lips felt puckered and swollen and his eyebrows rose close to his hairline as he still didn't move away from the girl who had once been his girlfriend.
Another noise came from Eleanor. That time it was unclear whether it was a sob of devastation or a chuckle of disbelief. Or a snort of derision. Either way, it was something. It was a response. And a proper one came next. In fact, one above one that Justin was expecting.
He felt the gripping touch of her hand suddenly in the back of his hair, but it let go almost as soon as the sentence had been finished with.
"I know, but I can't bear you looking back and watching me leave because I know that I will look back and walk right back to you…" Eleanor whispered against Justin, and she whispered against the February night. She whispered against the dying down crackling of the fire.
And although these words were so very eye opening and they were finally Eleanor letting her own last guard down and putting her last card on the table as well, all Justin did was let out his own sort of noise.
Like his former girlfriend previously, it wasn't exactly clear what that sound spoke of. Justin still isn't clear either.
Nevertheless, a soft uttering could be heard. And although they had both promised to go their separate ways, as their eyes fluttered shut and their hands didn't reach for each other that time, they remained lingering right next to each other and just breathing.
They breathed in the memory of what it was like to be near each other. They breathed out any hope of the future. There was no way that they were going to work out. There was simply no way.
But for the time being, none of that was on their minds. Nothing was on their minds at all. Only each other. Only that moment. They stood with the memory of that they had once been. They would mess each other up enough in due course to forget any good memories that there had been!
Yet as they stood together and they inhaled and they exhaled and they lingered on that lost love, at least they were united. They had spoken their truth. It hadn't been enough to secure their relationship. But it was words that were meant to be spoken.
Sometimes the truth is hard. Sometimes the truth hurts. It's not easy to say. It's even less easy to hear. But it's necessary. Not because it is a perspective that a whole collection of people agrees on. But because it alters paths.
The truth leads the way. And I know in my heart that Justin and El's relationship carved a great many paths for them both. And strangely, it did lead to each other again in a way. And lead others into the arms of where they needed to be.
The End.
There you go, thanks so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed! :) This chapter is a very important one for many reasons but one of them is that I believe that you can see the path of how after this relationship, Justin grows quite guarded in his future romantic relationships and unwilling to fight for them from the moment that someone expresses uncertainty towards them. He gave this one his all, for good and for bad. And I think this relationship taught him that never again was he going to try this hard for someone considering walking away. It would be easy to portray Eleanor as a villain and dismissive of Justin's sexuality but at the end of the day, they are around eighteen years old in this chapter and going through things adults would struggle to navigate. Their relationship has its flaws and causes its trauma. But they manage to be in each other's lives again in the future. I should write about that too :3 Thanks again for reading and I will be back again on the 23rd to upload a very special story to see you then!
Amy signing out :)