Archive of Our Own

Dear Wilson,  

First of all, I love you. Just wanted to make that clear. Second of all, holy fucking shit. Do you have any idea what you've done to the inside of my chest—what you’ve rearranged without asking, what you’ve set down like a match in a room full of old paper, what you’ve made impossible to un-know?

You can’t just casually lace your feelings into ink like it’s a trap line, stretch it across the doorframe of my day, and then be surprised when I walk into it and it catches. 

You can’t do that thing you do where you pretend you’re being reckless only because you don’t know how to be careful, when the truth is you’re always careful—careful like a person who learned early that wanting anything too loudly is a good way to watch it get taken away.

I’m saying that like I’m scolding you, but I’m not. Not really. I’m saying it like a person whose hands are shaking even though nothing is technically happening. 

Like a person who found dynamite under a rug and is now standing there, staring at it, trying to decide whether to cover it back up or pick it up carefully and hold it like it might burn, like it might finally light something.

Because that’s what you did. You lit something.

And now I’m sitting at the kitchen table with a pen like I’m trying to negotiate with the concept of language itself. Like if I pick the right words, the world will stop feeling so… full. Like if I write the right sentence, I will become a person who can hold all of this without dropping it.

I don’t know if that’s possible. But I’m going to try. I’m going to try to be as honest as you were. (If I fail, just know it's because you set the bar like a fucking lunatic.)

The reason I'm writing this at the kitchen table is because if I sit on the couch, I’ll end up staring at the spot where you’d be, and if I sit in our room, I’ll end up staring at the door like a dog waiting for a person who isn’t coming in fast enough. 

So, table. Neutral territory. Hard chair. Cold wood under my forearms. A place that keeps me from doing the thing I want to do, which is to walk three rooms over, find you, and press my forehead to your shoulder and just stay there until whatever storm you’ve been hiding in finally breaks into rain.

You would hate how long I stared at your letter before I touched it. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I did. 

Because I wanted to press my whole face into it like an idiot. Because it felt like touching it would make it real, and part of me has been surviving by keeping certain things just slightly unreal. Slightly hypothetical. Slightly “I can handle it because I don’t have to name it.”

And then you named it. You took the thing I keep folded up behind my ribs and you held it up to the light and you said, “This is here. This is happening. This is you. This is me. This is us. This is also Zali.”

This is everything we keep circling around like a candle we’re afraid to breathe too close to.

You didn’t hand it to me. At least, not physically. I found it. 

And before you accuse me of snooping like I’m some kind of gremlin, I was looking for the extra batteries. The ones we keep in that drawer you refuse to call “the battery drawer” even though that is very obviously what it is. 

You always call it “the drawer with the stuff,” like that means anything. Like the entire apartment isn’t “the place with the stuff.” Like you aren’t the human embodiment of “the big bright star with the stuff.” You are sunshine in a t-shirt and jeans, Wilson. 

Anyway. I opened the drawer. And then there it was. Your whole heart on a page, swearing and glowing and bleeding poetry like you couldn’t stop it if you tried.

I didn’t mean to read it. That’s the part that sounds like a lie, right? That’s the part where you roll your eyes and go, “Oh, sure. You accidentally read the whole thing.” But I didn’t, genuinely. I meant to put it back. I meant to close the drawer and let it stay where it was, like a fragile animal hiding under a porch.

But then I saw my name. I saw Zali’s name. I saw yours. And I felt that small internal shift—the one you can’t really explain to anyone else. The one where your whole body goes quiet because something in you recognizes that it is about to become responsible for something.

I could have been better about it. I could have stopped. I could have given you the dignity of choosing when you wanted me to know.

But I am not a saint, Wilson. And you are not the only one who misses you even when you’re in the room.

So I read it.

I read it standing there in the kitchen doorway, with the afternoon light on the floor and the sound of the building settling around us like an animal stretching in its sleep. I read it and I felt like I had been handed something sacred with my bare hands. I read it and I wanted to laugh and swear and put my forehead against the cabinet door and just… stay there until my nerves stopped buzzing.

Because I love you. I know I said it already, but I’m saying it again because it deserves repetition and you’re the kind of person who believes things more when they’re said twice, like the first one might have been a trick. But I need you to understand something. 

My mind does not experience things in a straight line. It does not go from Event to Reaction to Done. It goes from Event to Meaning, and the meaning blooms into ten thousand threads, and the threads wrap around every memory I’ve ever had of you, and then around every fear I’ve ever had of myself. 

That’s what you’ve done. 

You’ve become threaded into me, and now when I move, you move. When I breathe, I feel you. When I try to sleep, there you are, like a quiet weight that is also somehow a warmth.

And then because you clearly want me to die you went and wrote me a fucking cathedral.

You built this whole beautiful, ridiculous thing out of your fear and your tenderness and your mouth, and you didn’t even tell me you were building it. You just left it there like a gift you didn’t think you deserved to hand over directly.

You always think you're the problem. 

And just like always, you're wrong, bitch.

Here's the problem: now I know.

Now I know you have been carrying this. Now I know you have been trying to be brave in the ways that don’t look like bravery. Now I know you want me, and you love me, and you are afraid of how much, and you are afraid of what it costs to say it out loud.

And now that I know, I have to decide what kind of person I am going to be about it.

In your letter, you wrote about me like I’m a force of nature. Like I just “end up” in the middle of things. Like I’m gravity. Like I’m the kind of person who gets to be inevitable. I am not inevitable, Wilson. 

I am just here. 

I am a person in an apartment with two people who somehow chose me back, and I am trying every day not to fuck it up by being too careful or too quiet or too afraid of saying the wrong thing.

Sometimes I look at Zali and I think: how the fuck are you real.

And sometimes I look at you and I think: how the fuck are you real.

And then I look at the both of you and I think: how the fuck am I in a story where I get both.

After I finished your letter, I stood there for a long time.

I didn’t do anything for a full minute, maybe more. I stared at the paper like it might change. Like if I kept staring, the ink would transform itself into something less terrifying.

Then I did something I don’t do often.

I cried. A little. Shut up.

I’m not saying it was dramatic. It wasn’t sobbing. It was more like my eyes decided to leak because my body didn’t have another release valve. It was quiet. It was humiliating. It was… true.

I wiped my face with the back of my wrist and then immediately washed my hands again because, again, apparently I’m performing rituals now. Then I walked into the living room because I needed to see something stable.

Zali looked up at me from the couch. He had that expression he gets when he's reading the room like a book he'd already finished and still enjoys. He looked at me with that unwavering gaze, the one that says, “I know what you are doing and I am going to let you do it until you are ready to stop pretending.”

He didn’t ask what was wrong. He didn’t ask what happened, what I found, what I read. He didn’t ask me if I was okay. He doesn’t do that thing where people try to drag your feelings out of you like a splinter.

He just patted the cushion beside him, an invitation that didn’t demand.

I sat down.

I didn’t show him the letter. Not yet. That’s not mine to share without thinking. But I looked at him and I felt something in my chest unwind because that’s just what happens when you're with Zali. When you're with Zali, you know you're safe.

He leaned his head against my shoulder, not pushing, not asking, just existing close enough to be a reminder that I’m not alone in this. That we aren’t.

I sat there with your letter folded in my pocket and I felt like I was carrying a live ember. Not a threat. A promise. A heat that could either warm us or burn us, depending on how carefully we handle it.

Then Zali said, very quietly, “You look like you're trying not to crack.”

I turned the volume of the TV higher because I am a child.

“If you are going to do this with him, you have to stop treating tenderness like a trap.”

I almost snapped something back, because my instinct is always to push when I feel cornered. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. Not with your letter in my pocket and your presence in the hallway and Zali’s calm voice making the whole room feel like a confession booth.

So I said the only honest thing I could manage.

“I don’t know what to do with it.”

Zali didn’t ask what it was. He just nodded like he understood the shape of my problem without needing the specifics.

“You don’t have to know right away,” he said. “You just have to not hurt him because you’re scared.”

That hit like a slap, because it’s true, and I hate that it’s true.

I wanted to argue that I don’t hurt people on purpose. I wanted to argue that I’m careful. I wanted to argue that if anyone gets hurt, it’s because they got too close and didn’t watch their step. But the thing about Zali is he doesn’t let you hide behind intention. He doesn’t let you pretend the impact doesn’t matter.

So naturally I said nothing.

Zali reached out for the remote and turned the TV off. The sudden quiet made everything louder. The refrigerator hum. The distant sound of you moving around in the bathroom. The awful, steady thump of my own heart. Even Zali's voice.

“You’re allowed to be loved, Vanta.”

At that, I laughed. It came out sharp, because that’s the only kind of laugh I know when I’m trying not to cry.

“Yeah?” I said. “By who?”

Zali looked at me like I was stupid. Not unkindly. Just plainly.

“By Wilson,” he said. “By me.” And then—this is the part that always gets me—he added, “By you.”

He got up and left the room after that, because Zali knows when to stop. Zali knows how to plant a sentence in your chest and walk away like it won’t grow roots.

I stayed there for a while, staring at the dark screen. My reflection looked like someone who had been caught doing something wrong.

I went back to our room later, after you were asleep. You were in your spot, sleeping on the left side. One arm thrown over the pillow, hair a mess, face softened by sleep into something almost gentle. Almost.

I sat on the floor beside the bed because I didn’t trust myself to lie down next to you yet. I didn’t trust myself with closeness when I was still full of your words like a swallowed flame.

At that moment, I wanted to kneel in front of you, take your wrists gently, hold them like I’m proving to both of us that touch doesn’t have to be a trap, then tell you that you belong here.

I wanted to say, “Shut the fuck up, dumbass.”

I wanted to say, “Shut the fuck up and stop apologizing for wanting love.”

I wanted to say, “I’m here. I’m here. I’m here.”

But I didn’t. Instead, I took out your letter. I looked down at your handwriting.

You’re right. It’s bad. It’s also you. It’s pointy in places and curvy in others, like you’re trying to hide the honesty by making it messy on purpose. There are parts where the pen pressed too hard, parts where it skated like you were afraid the paper might feel you. 

There’s one smudged spot where I can imagine your thumb dragging through wet ink because you didn’t wait for it to dry, because you never wait for anything to dry, because patience is not one of your virtues unless it’s a person.

I think about how many times I’ve watched you do something with your hands without realizing I was paying attention. It’s stupid, the inventory that starts happening in my head the second I finish your letter. 

I see you turning a key in a lock. I see you pulling your hair back with a hairclip you pretend you don’t care about losing. I see you holding a knife the wrong way, too close to the blade, like you think you can intimidate the concept of being cut. 

I see you tying your shoes with the laces knotted too tight. I see you tapping your fingers against your thigh when you’re trying to look calm. I see you reaching for me in your sleep sometimes, half-aware, like your body does it before your brain can tell it not to.

And now I see you writing.

I’ve never seen it. Not really. I’ve seen you type. I’ve seen you scribble notes. I’ve seen you sign your name. I’ve never seen you sit down and bleed out a whole goddamn letter like you’re trying to summon something.

You were probably hunched over the page like you were shielding it from the world. I can hear you scowling at your own sentences, like the act of caring offended you. You probably would've taken breaks to stare at the wall, as if the wall could offer advice.

You think you’re a mess because you feel too much.

I think you’re a mess because you keep trying to pretend you don’t. There’s a difference.

Wilson, I don’t know what kind of life you had before this. Before us. I don’t know what taught you to hide your warmth like contraband. I don’t know who made you feel like you had to be cold to be safe.

But I know this: you shouldn’t have had to become numb to survive.

And I’m sorry you did.

I’m not saying that because I’m trying to be nice, I'm saying it because it’s a fact I can’t stop thinking about. I keep picturing you learning how to be the person you are now, and it makes my chest ache in a way I don’t know how to fix, despite what you said about my hands.

Wilson.

My hands aren’t magic. They’re just hands.

You’re right about one thing, though. You do break things. Not because you’re careless, but because you feel everything like it matters. Because you have a whole engine inside you that doesn’t know how to idle. 

And I need you to know something else.

Sometimes you overwhelm me. But being overwhelmed is not the same as wanting to leave. Being tired is not the same as wanting you less. Needing space is not the same as rejecting you.

If I need a minute, it’s because I want to come back in a way that is kind. And if you see me step away, I need you not to interpret it as abandonment. I need you to let me have the minute, and trust that I will return.

Because I will. I do. I’m here. I keep showing up. You think you’re the one always breaking things. But you also mend. You mend in ways you don’t even recognize, fix things you don't even realize you are fixing.

You fix the mood in a room by making someone laugh when they’re about to fold in on themselves. You fix the emptiness in a day by making it feel like something is happening. You fix my tendency to retreat by coming to find me, by pulling me back into the world with your ambition.

You have this rare ability to take something raw and make it luminous. You have this way of describing things that makes them feel true, even when they’re messy. 

You also have this way of insulting yourself that makes me want to grab you by the face and say, “Stop.”

So I’m saying it now. Stop.

Stop talking about yourself like you’re inherently destructive. Stop treating your own tenderness like it’s embarrassing. Stop calling your love a shameful thing. If you can’t stop entirely, then at least let us interrupt you when you do it. 

Let us say, “No,” and have that matter.

Because you make Zali feel chosen in a way that isn’t worship. You make him feel seen. That matters to him more than you know. You make me feel less alone inside my own mind. 

That is not a small thing. That is not a casual gift. That is life-changing.

So yes. 

You will break things. So will I. So will Zali. We are humans living in close orbit. We will bump into each other. We will spill coffee. We will say the wrong thing. We will misunderstand. We will bruise old wounds without meaning to.

But breaking isn’t the end. Breaking is part of building. I’m not afraid of conflict. I’m afraid of cruelty. And you are not cruel. Even when you’re cutting, you are not cruel.

You might be defensive. You might be loud. You might be dramatic. But underneath it, you are always reaching. You are always trying to connect. That’s why your intensity doesn’t scare me. Because it’s not random. It’s attachment. It’s longing. It’s fear of loss.

I can work with that. We can work with that.

I'll admit something. I think about your hands, too.

I think about how they hover before they touch, like you’re giving the other person a chance to refuse. I think about how they clench when you’re trying not to say something.

I think about how they go gentle with Zali without you even thinking about it. I think about how they look when they’re shaking, which you try to hide, and which makes me want to hold them until your body remembers it’s allowed to rest.

Wilson, do you know what your hands do?

Your hands are always doing something. Always restless. Always fidgeting. Like the energy in you needs an exit. But when you touch Zali—when you touch me—it’s different. It’s like your whole nervous system drops into a lower gear. Like your body finally believes it doesn’t have to run.

You touch like you’re checking for reality. You touch like you’re making sure someone is still there. And I think that’s why it gets under my skin. Because I understand it.

There are times when I’m lying in bed and the room is quiet and you’re asleep, and I can’t sleep because my mind is doing what it does—cataloging, analyzing, predicting—and then you shift and your hand finds my arm in the dark like it knows where I am without needing light.

And my brain… stops. Not forever. Not perfectly. But it quiets.

Because there’s something about being touched by someone who doesn’t flinch from you that makes your thoughts less violent.

Did you know I read your letter three times?

The first time, I read it fast, like I was trying to outrun the part of me that would start shaking. I made it through the beginning and had to stop at the bakery dog because suddenly I could see it, and I could see you seeing it, and I felt exposed. Not in a bad way. In a way that made me want to put my head through the wall and wait until I can hear past the rush of my heart in my ears.

The second time, I read it slowly, because my brain finally accepted that there wasn’t a fire to put out, that I wasn’t being attacked, that this wasn’t a test I could pass by staying calm. And on the second read I realized how much of the letter wasn’t just about love. It was about fear. 

It was about the way you’re always balancing on the edge of your own intensity like it’s a cliff you might fall from if you relax for one second. It was about how you keep apologizing for existing too loudly, too sharply, too much.

Wilson. Listen to me. I need you to know this, okay? I need you to absorb it all the way down until it's carved into your bones.

You are not too much. 

You are exactly the amount you are and I don't want any less of you.

You don’t have to be perfect to be loved.

You do not have to preemptively punish yourself for mistakes you haven’t made yet.

You do not have to earn being held.

I know you believe—somewhere in the bitter part of you—that if you’re too intense, people will leave. That your intensity is saltwater. That one day I’ll get tired. That one day Zali will get tired. That one day you’ll wake up and realize you’ve been tolerated, not chosen.

I want to be very clear.

I am choosing you. Zali is choosing you. Yes, you will screw up. But we will still choose you.

And I'll screw up, too. So will Zali. That’s how it works. But I also think we need one more rule, and I’m adding it here, officially, in writing, like we’re founding a tiny country: 

When someone feels afraid, we say so. Not with a joke. Not with a sideways comment. Not by picking a fight. We say it. Because fear thrives in silence and you and I are both experts at feeding fear by not naming it. So I’m naming mine right now.

I’m afraid sometimes that you don’t believe us. I’m afraid sometimes that you’ll decide you’re too much and leave before we can convince you otherwise.

I’m afraid sometimes that you’ll get overwhelmed by how much you feel and you’ll try to save yourself by burning everything down, because destruction can feel like control.

But those fears are not prophecies. They’re just old survival patterns, trying to claim new territory. We can outgrow them. Together, like we do everything.

There's a certain part in your letter that made me want to rip the paper in half. I saw it, and something in me went absolutely still. Like every protective instinct I have snapped into place at once. 

My eyes landed on those words and I felt my throat do that thing. The thing where emotion catches like a hook behind the sternum and you have to decide whether you’re going to swallow it or let it pull you open. I am very good at swallowing it. I have had practice. 

That's what she said LMAO

When I got to that part, I wanted to walk into our room, grab you by the collar, shake you, kiss you until you forget you ever learned the word “coward” and then pull you into my chest and refuse to let go.

But I didn’t.

Because you wrote it down, and you deserve a response that meets you where you are.

How delusional can you be to even think for a moment you’re an extra piece when you’re literally the thing that makes the whole structure hold together the way it does?

Because no.

Listen to me.

No.

Absolutely the fuck not, Wilson. 

Don't you remember what Zali and I told you, shit, almost two years ago now? 

You are the glue that draws us together.

You are not spare. You are not a third chair. You are one of the legs of the table and if you saw yourself off, we all fall. You are not an afterthought. You are not a compromise. You are not the thing we tolerate because it’s easier than confronting how hard it is to love someone intense.

You are the third point.

Do you know what a triangle is without the third point? It’s a line. It’s tension without shape. It’s potential without a structure to hold it. It’s two people staring at each other, trying to decide where to put all their feelings.

I need you to understand this in a way that is not abstract. In a way that is not something you can shrug off later like you never heard it.

There was never a table built for two. There was never a story where it was just me and Zali, neat and symmetrical, and then you wandered in like an extra piece.

I know you think you’re a spare because you’ve trained yourself to assume you’re temporary. Like if you get too comfortable, the floor will vanish. But the truth is: you are the reason the shape works.

You are the tension that makes the geometry hold. You are the spark that keeps it from becoming complacent. You are the friction that makes it real. You are part of the constellation. You are part of the home.

Zali is steadiness. He’s gravity. He’s the part of us that keeps the orbit stable and grounded. And you, Wilson, are—damn it. 

You’re the meteor. You’re the sudden bright streak across the sky that reminds me the universe is not just a series of predictable circles. You make me feel alive in a way that terrifies me.

And I don’t want to lose that.

I know you don’t always believe things you can’t see. I know you don’t always believe things you can see, because your brain is an unreliable narrator that likes to turn love into a trick question. But I want you to try to believe me anyway because I have watched the way Zali looks at you when you’re not paying attention.

I have watched the way Zali’s hands move to you like it’s instinct, like a gravity he doesn’t even question. I have watched Zali soften around you in ways Zali doesn’t soften around most people, because Zali is gentle, but Zali is also… cautious. Selective. There are doors in Zali that do not open for everyone.

They open for you.

You are one of the main gravitational forces in this ridiculous little constellation, and if you disappeared, it would not simply “go back to normal.” There would be no normal. There would be a crater.

I know you believe, logically, that we make space for you. You even said it. But I don’t think you’ve internalized the fact that we don’t make space for you like charity. We make space for you because you belong there. 

Because we want you there. Because the shape of our life has your name written into it now, even on days when you’re snarling, even on days when you’re quiet, even on days when you’re convinced you’re one mistake away from being unlovable.

Do you remember the first time you fell asleep on the couch with us, our first movie night?

I do.

You probably don’t, because you were exhausted in that way you get when you’ve been running on adrenaline and denial for too long. You were mid-sentence—complaining about something indignantly because that’s what you do—and then your voice slowed like your body finally made an executive decision.

Zali was humming. I was half-watching you, half-listening to the sound of your breathing changing. When you finally dropped off, you shifted closer without waking, like your body knew where it wanted to be even if your pride would’ve objected.

Zali glanced at you, then looked over at me and smiled, small and fond, like he was thinking the same thing I was thinking: There you are. There is my person.

And I remember feeling this strange softness, like something unclenched inside my chest. Because it wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t a grand declaration. It was just you, sleeping, trusting the space around you enough to let go.

Sometimes I look at you and Zali together and I feel this ache that is almost reverence. Like I’m watching two things I love exist in the same frame, and my brain can’t decide whether to be grateful or terrified.

I don’t want to take anything from you.

I don’t want to take anything from him.

And sometimes my fear tries to convince me that wanting you means taking. That love is a finite resource. That if I hold you too tightly, I’ll bruise what’s already there.

But then you do something like write a letter where you say you love the three of us together—the strange, tender geometry of it—and I remember that we are not dividing love here. We are multiplying it.

I think you believe you’re this sealed box. That you’re opaque. That no one can really see you unless you decide to open yourself like a locked door.

Wilson, I live with you.

I hear you in the quiet moments. Not just the sound of you, but the way you are when you think no one is watching. The way you pause in the hallway as if you’re deciding whether to enter a room. The way you wash a plate and stare at it too long like you’re listening to it confess something. 

The way you stare at the ceiling when you can’t sleep, like you’re negotiating with the dark. The way you sit a little closer to me when you think I’m not paying attention, and then act like you didn’t.

I have also watched you soften when you think no one’s looking. Like when you’re half-asleep on the couch and Zali drapes a blanket over you, and you pretend you don’t notice, but you tug it closer anyway.

Like when you hand me something without making a comment, and your fingers linger for half a second too long, and your mouth twitches like you want to pretend it didn’t matter.

It matters. It all matters.

You know what else you do?

You make people feel seen in a way that is almost unbearable.

You notice when someone is lying, but you don’t humiliate them. You give them a way out. You notice when someone is hurting, and you act like you don’t, but then you show up with exactly what they need like you’re allergic to being caught caring. You notice when Zali is too quiet. You notice when I’m too distant. You notice when the apartment feels off, like the air is holding its breath.

Sometimes I watch you from the corner of my eye, not because I’m evaluating you, not because I’m judging, but because I’m trying to understand what you’re not saying.

You are loud with your words, but you are quiet with your needs. You make jokes. You perform. You distract. But your needs are shy.

And I want to be the kind of person who notices them anyway.

You said you’re always thinking about the version of me you don’t get to see in that moment. I want to see versions of you too.

I want to see the version of you that rests without guilt. I want to see the version of you that lets yourself be taken care of without making it a transaction.

I want to see the version of you that doesn’t have to preemptively apologize for existing.

I want to see the version of you that believes, even just for a day, that you are loved and that love will stay.

I want the kind of love that survives Tuesday afternoons and ugly moods and miscommunications and the weird little insecurities that come out when you haven’t slept. 

I want the kind of love that doesn’t need constant emergency-level intensity to prove it exists. I want the kind of love that is a practice. A choice. A place you return to.

And I know—because I know you—that you are capable of that. But I also know you can run from it, not because you don’t care, but because you care so much it makes you feel cornered by your own depth. I’ve watched you do it with other things. 

You throw yourself into movement so you don’t have to stand still long enough to feel the weight of what you actually want.

So I’m asking you, not as a demand and not as a plea, but as a choice I’m making: Choose us back. Not in secret. Not in half-measures. Not in a way that keeps you poised to flee the moment you feel exposed.

Choose us with your whole stupid heart.

And if you can’t—if you truly can’t—then tell me. Tell me in a way that doesn’t make me feel like I’m being punished for wanting you. Tell me in a way that doesn’t make you a martyr. Tell me in a way that’s clean enough that I can grieve and move.

But if you can?

If there is any part of you reading this that feels the pull, that feels the desire to come home, even if you don’t think you deserve it—

Follow it. I am not here by accident. I am not choosing you by mistake. I am not loving you because the universe threw dice and this is what came up.

I am loving you because I looked at you and recognized something that felt like home, even when it scared me. And I keep choosing you because I want to. Because it matters. 

Because you matter.

I know you might read this and think, “Vanta, you’re making it bigger than it is.”

Maybe. But what if I’m not? What if it is big?

What if the reason it feels big is because it’s real?

We’re so conditioned to treat real love like it has to be effortless, like it has to be easy, like if you have to talk about it then it’s not right. That’s bullshit. The things that matter require language. They require care. They require intention.

I’m not asking for perfection. I’m asking for participation.

When we first met, we weren’t a constellation yet. We were three separate lights, not aligned, just close enough that the universe started drawing lines between us.

Zali made it feel possible. Zali always makes things feel possible. Zali is the kind of person who can walk into a room where two people are about to snap at each other and somehow, without forcing anything, soften the atmosphere. Like rain hitting dust and settling it.

I was the instigator, the enabler. I still am. I’m the one who pokes. The one who teases. The one who taps the weak point just to see what happens. You are the blade. You are the one who cuts first so you won’t be cut.

And Zali is the hand that steadies us both. The hand that says, without saying, you’re safe enough to stop clenching.

Sometimes I worry that I’m not good for this. 

That I’m too much motion, too much noise, too much hunger. That I’ll burn the whole structure down just by wanting it too hard.

Then Zali will look at me—soft eyes, calm mouth—and I’ll remember that being wanted doesn’t have to be a threat. It can be an invitation. A warmth. A place to rest.

With you, I keep finding myself in moments where the plan evaporates. And that is… intoxicating. It is also grounding, strangely. Because desire is simple. Desire doesn’t require analysis. Desire doesn’t ask if it’s reasonable. Desire is just a truth in the body.

So here is a truth in my body, written down:

When you walk past me and your hand brushes mine, it takes effort not to turn and pull you into me.

When you sit too close on the couch and pretend it’s casual, I notice the exact distance between our knees like it’s a measurement that could decide the rest of my life.

When you tilt your head and get that look—like you’re about to say something you know you shouldn’t—I want to stop you with my mouth.

I want you.

I want you so badly it makes me reckless.

I want you in the hallway when the lights flicker. I want you on the couch, your head tipped back, your mouth still half-formed around a joke you didn’t finish. 

I want you in the way you mean, yes, the physical way, the mouth-and-hands way. I want the way you press into people when you’re finally convinced they won’t disappear. I want the way you get possessive and then immediately mock yourself for it, like desire is something you have to apologize for.

But I also want you in the quieter way.

I want you in the moments when you’re not performing. When your eyes go soft and you look like you’re about to run, and I get to stop you. I want you in my space. 

I want your toothbrush next to mine. I want the sound of your footsteps. I want the small daily collisions that make a life. I want the future you keep describing like a hallway with the lights on.

I want you in the mornings when you’re half-asleep and your guard is still tangled in the sheets. I want you in the middle of the day when you text something ridiculous and then follow it with, “Sorry, ignore me,” like your existence is a burden.

I want you on the bad days, too. The sharp days. The days when you go cold because warmth feels like a trap. 

I want you when you’re in your own head, biting yourself from the inside, and you look at me like you’re waiting for me to confirm your worst fear—that you’re unlovable.

Wilson, if you are waiting for me to confirm that fear, you are going to be waiting forever because I refuse.

You are loved.

I wish I could put that into your bones. I wish I could carve it into the part of you that panics.

The only thing I can do, really, is love you.

I love you in the quiet parts and the messy parts and the parts where you don’t know what you’re doing. I love you when you’re incandescent with affection and when you’re dim with fear. I love you when you’re gentle, which you are more often than you think. I love you when you’re infuriating, which you are also more often than you think.

I love the way the apartment feels when we are all here. It’s like the air is finally the right temperature. I love the way Zali can be soft with you and you don’t punish him for it. You tease, but you don’t bite. Not really.

I love the way you and I can argue and it doesn’t feel like war. It feels like weather. It feels like two people testing boundaries because they want to know what will hold.

I love you, Wilson.

And if you ever doubt it, you’re going to have to deal with me being insufferably insistent about it, because I will remind you until you’re annoyed enough to believe it.

So.

Now I’m going to come find you. You said you’re probably in our room, glaring at the ceiling like you’re mad at it. You’re probably pretending you’re not waiting. I know you, Wilson. You’re waiting. 

I’m coming anyway.

— Vanta