Chapter Text
Love sometimes had a way of making II wish he was dead.
He had never really been cut out to be a lover or one half of a doting couple. His love ran so deep that he knew it would make anybody shrink away. Rolling through him like great waves of the ocean, reaching depths where no light could shine. And the way he expressed that love and passion wasn't even something fit to be displayed in the light of day.
At first, he thought it was little details that kept him from embracing love. That said, discovering kink wasn't the problem at all. Finding like-minded people wasn't difficult, whether on the internet or at university. The problem was the intensity with which he loved. All-consuming and forceful in every little corner of his mind.
As if other people could smell it or sense it, they recoiled whenever he showed even a fraction of it. Apparently wanting to know everything about your partner was only desirable in small doses.
What did they mean, he wanted to know where they were, how their health was, and whether they wanted to have sex with other people?
How sick of him.
If he loved you, he wanted to see that you were healthy because he wanted to keep you around for a long time. Not quietly killing yourself like his fucking dad had. Dead now, after years of substance abuse and a body finally giving out.
He would want you to be happy because he couldn't bear seeing someone, he loved cry the way his mum had. Working herself into an early grave because of a dying spouse and the five children he'd left her with. Always working. Only living for the survival of her children.
And he would want to know where you were because he never wanted to sit in A&E again beside someone he loved, abused, beaten and bruised. Like his sister after a night out with her friends. A night that had ended in the flat of some bloke who wouldn't let her leave and with nobody she could call.
You could say he was damaged goods, but really, he was only cautious with his heart. He was always nice and forthcoming because everyone deserved decent treatment until proven to be an arsehole. His family and his sense of humour had taught him that people weren't bad because they swore like sailors or looked like escaped convicts.
Sometimes it was genetics.
Sometimes it was a choice.
But if he loved you and you had no problem winding yourself deep into his life, he would want to see every pleasure you could possibly take, and he would want to witness it. Even if that meant sitting at the side with a front-row seat while you took that pleasure from somebody else.
Because if he was honest, if he was the one fucking your brains out, said brain wouldn't be able to analyse and catalogue every little detail of how you looked while embracing that desire. That was a lesson he would learn much later but even then, he already knew he was capable of that sort of shameless behaviour.
What he didn't know was how those tendencies would shape themselves around another person who matched him in intensity.
Ever since he saw her, he'd known he could get lost in her. The way she articulated herself. The expressions that crossed her face, letting everyone see her distaste or the smugness she took in her own capability.
It wasn't the first time he'd seen her, the corridors were full of freshers now that the semester had started, but the first time he truly took an interest was in a dusty piano room. A random coincidence, as he'd only been there to see what equipment he'd need to record the drum kit in one of the university studios.
She was only helping a friend who didn't know how to tune a piano properly and said piano happened to be sitting in the studio for obvious reasons. Someone should have recorded her face when the friend snapped at her to play another song. “Couldn't you be any more cliché than playing Für Elise on a piano? Every eight-year-old learning piano plays that. I thought you had experience.”
The look she gave him. Most people would have called it boredom. II saw the bite behind those eyes. And when she laid her fingers on the keys again and let another melody flourish beneath them, while her companion looked increasingly delighted, he knew her to be a musical mastermind.
It sounded lovely to his untrained ears, but he had enough backbone to catch the joke hidden inside it.
Her brown hair glowed gold in the late-evening sunlight. Her eyes narrowed with concentration.
Calculated.
Focused.
She was a kind of perfection he rarely encountered, having grown up on the poorer side of England.
Perfectly manicured nails. A pristine pastel satin blouse and white shorts paired with white kitten heels. The very image of wealth and aristocratic confidence wrapped into one small package. The haughty glare was what did him in, because he knew she was only mocking the man and his stupid pride.
When he asked, “Wow, what was that?” she simply chirped, “Für Elise.” II wasn't much of a classical music man, but when she played it again, languidly weaving the notes together, you could clearly hear the motif from Beethoven's parody of the famous piece.
At that point he couldn't hold back the snort any longer. He was only a bystander, only there to inspect the snares and toms for the recording session the next day. Now he was the audience to a cinematic takedown delivered by this woman, and he savoured every stammer and excuse while she sat there like a queen holding court. One of the many traits that would later make her one of the best and most sought-after Dommes in the community.
At the time he was impressed, but he didn't know whether it was born out of snobbishness or genuine calculation. Such a smart, clever, cocky woman, and she knew it. That was what drew him in. The attitude and the capability to reimagine a famous piece on the fly, only to mock a man for his ignorance.
A decade later he would see the pattern repeat itself, this time with a man, but it would have the same effect on II.
But it wasn't only the proud part. It was also the deep-set fear hiding beneath the stillness. Pain swallowed down so expertly that no one could see it or even sense a fraction of it. Only the eyes sometimes betrayed the broken parts underneath.
Hidden, but never from him.
Always open to him.
Fate wasn't something he believed in, considering all the shit he had seen and all the shit he would still see.
Fate would have to be a bitch.
That being said, when she one day sauntered into the munch that II and his friends organised once a month, he was inclined to believe fate existed after all. But with her sitting down beside him and meeting his gaze without wavering, he knew he was done for, knowing that she had a Dom didn't change that, it only made him more private about the feeling beginning to grow.
Seeing with every passing moment that he had found someone capable of holding his affection and never shying away from his intensity only made him hold on more. So much that he knew the love was maybe one-sided, but he was content simply being with her.
Always with her.
Holding his feelings close to his heart, knowing she was worth that little bit of pain, otherwise he would have to be without her. And that wasn't acceptable to him. Not to mention her acceptance of every strange behaviour or request he made. Like tracking her whereabouts. Knowing how her cycle worked and gifting her things according to its phases. Or when they went out, needing to have her within sight and, if she needed a bathroom break, her telling him.
Everything he threw at her; she was content to go along with. As far-fetched as him being so high that he proposed and only saving himself with the excuse that he'd meant they should start a business together.
A Domme escort service.
A stoner bakery.
Of course he would do that, but not without her.
Things only became stranger when she herself admitted that she wanted more control in her life, considering how much outside pressure there was. Nothing that a good conversation between them couldn't solve. And as she left that sad excuse of a man behind, leaving the mantle of a sub behind with him, II became her crutch. Cheering her on to go and get all the fun she wanted to have.
Nothing was amiss for him.
He was content when she was content.
He was happy when she was happy.
Maybe they were too co-dependent, but two separate lives slowly became one without much fanfare or grand romantic gestures. Since everything they did spoke of love. As a result, maybe that was the crux of it. Thinking they would feel everything together. Having the same opinion on everything. Taking everything for granted.
When the time came to put their relationship to the test, she maybe broke his heart, but he let her.
It maybe felt like drowning slowly, but he couldn't stop the direction their lives were taking.
It maybe felt like freezing, taking a step back but never stopping the affection he held for her.
It maybe felt like setting himself on fire with everything weighing her down more and more and being unable to make it stop.
It felt like stabbing himself in the heart as she fled across the pond, so far away from him, while he waited for some sign of what to do with all of it.
But none of that took away from his kind of love. Only taking a step back to that close-to-the-heart thing he had before. In one way or another, he would love her.
Wherever she went, his heart would go too.